Only the massive, twisting trunk and thighs survive of this seated male nude, signed by Apollonios, son of Nestor, of Athens, probably after an earlier Hellenistic statue. Long read as Heracles, it may show Ajax contemplating suicide, the Vatican's favoured reading. In Rome by the 1430s, it fascinated Michelangelo, whose Sistine prophets and Last Judgement figures borrow its turning bulk.
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The skin he sits on was long taken for a lion's pelt; recent study suggests a panther. The sculptor's Greek signature is carved on the front of the base.
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