This work belongs to the series of 40 herms and honorary busts commissioned by Antonio Canova, in his capacity as Fine Arts Inspector in Rome, to promising young pupils of his studio and destined for the Pantheon in Rome. Its funerary monuments and primarily that of Raphael had made the ancient Roman temple the most sought-after burial place of the artists who, in 1542, had gathered under the banner of the Congregazione Pontificia dei Virtuosi al Pantheon and gained the concession of a chapel. An attentive reader of Archimedes' works, Galileo Galilei constantly venerated him and his texts formed the bases of the new experimental science.