The statue represents the hero Heracles as a beardless Lysippic[1][2][3] youth grasping the skin of the Nemean lion with his club upon his shoulder.

[4][5] The sculpture was found in the part of the villa's former site that had belonged to conte Giuseppe Fede.

It was restored at that time, as fragmentary sculptures did not appeal to neoclassical taste; the sculptor responsible, who was probably Carlo Albacini,[8] completed the statue's missing parts according to the sensibilities of the day: the nose was completed; the right forearm, several fingers, the rear of the lion's hide, part of the right thigh and the whole of the left calf were sculpted and assembled as discreetly as possible.

The 18th-century restorations were, in part, replaced with casts in epoxy resin, "to show the original as much as possible free of alien additions" according to the conservator Jerry Podany.

[5] The sculpture remained at Lansdowne House, London, until the grand reception rooms were sheared off in a street-widening scheme.