3-100-833 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London; photographer: Paul Highnam"/Heritage Images

Herakles fighting an Amazon, 1816. This cast is of part of the frieze from the Temple of Apollo Epikourios ('Apollo the Helper'), built 420-400 BCE, Bassae, southwest Arcadia, Greece. The complete frieze ran around the main room of the temple. It depicted two battles, one between the Lapiths and the Centaurs (West and North), the other between the Greeks and the Amazons (East and South). This section from the South frieze was positioned opposite the doorway, which entered from the north. It shows Herakles wielding his club against Hippolyta, the Amazonian Queen. In the summer of 1811 Carl Haller and C.R. Cockerell noticed these panels by chance, supposedly while peering down a fox hole. Haller returned to excavate in 1812. In 1814, the British Museum purchased all of the slabs of the frieze, often referred to as the 'Phigaleian marbles', in 1814. Under the direction of Richard Westmacott RA in 1816, the Royal Academy commissioned casts of the complete frieze. Sixteen of the 23 casts are still today at the Academy.