The History of Cardinal Farnese’s “Weary Hercules” – Iron Game History – August, 2005

Joe Weider, the godfather of modern bodybuilding, told me in an interview last year that it was a boyhood trip to the museum in Montreal which set him on his career path. According to the now 84-year old Weider, “Seeing the Farnese Hercules was a revelation—a turning point in my life. It became the ideal I held in my head of what a bodybuilder should look like, and I don’t know of any other piece of art that personifies power so effectively.