Hercules on Horseback

Bertoldo’s most significant contribution to Renaissance art was to the development of the bronze statuette. Earlier sculptors, including Filarete and perhaps Donatello, as well as Antonio Pollaiuolo and Bellano, experimented with statuettes, often in imitation of the bronzes of Classical antiquity, but more of Bertoldo’s statuettes survive than of any other early master, and there are further descriptions of other lost statuettes. The rustic Hercules on Horseback belongs to his earliest statuettes.