A bronze statuette of Hercules with the poisoned shirt of Nessus, gazing upwards and with a spiked club at his feet. Mounted on a triangular base. In Greek mythology, Hercules slew the centaur Nessus, who had abducted Hercules’s bride Deianira. Here, Hercules has put on a shirt dipped in Nessus’s blood, a deadly poison causing an intolerable burning sensation. Given the probable origin of this bronze as part of a firedog this was a suitable if macabre subject.