Old Skool
We went to the Getty Villa Museum today to do some sketching and check out the art. The Villa is a small museum of antiquities on the waterfront, set up like a ancient Roman house. I really liked their method of setting it up by subject matter rather than chronologically; each room is a different theme, like Gods and Goddesses, War, Portraits of Women, etc.
In keeping with the Heroes theme, I did this quick-study of the Landsdowne Herakles. Herakles (or Hercules) the greatest Greek and Roman hero, known for killing or collecting any weird beast or object that needed killing or collecting. One of the exhibits pointed out that, just like today's fictional heroes, Herakles had a set canon of stories, but many artists made up new ones when depicting him in sculpture or pottery.
This particular sculpture was a favorite of J. Paul Getty's collection and supposedly inspired him to build the Villa Museum.