I'm struggling to find a way to insert LARGE images (>100MB, mostly TIFF format) in my Oracle database, using BLOB columns.

I've searched thoroughly across the web and even in StackOverflow, without being able to find an answer to this problem.
First of all, the problem...then a short section on the relevant code (java classes/configuration), finally a third section where i show the junit test i've written to test image persistence (i receive the error during my junit test execution)

Edit: i've added a section, at the end of the question, where i describe some tests and analysis using JConsole

The problem

I receive an java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space error using hibernate and trying to persist very large images/documents:

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
at java.util.Arrays.copyOf(Arrays.java:2786)
at java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream.toByteArray(ByteArrayOutputStream.java:133)
at org.hibernate.type.descriptor.java.DataHelper.extractBytes(DataHelper.java:190)
at org.hibernate.type.descriptor.java.BlobTypeDescriptor.unwrap(BlobTypeDescriptor.java:123)
at org.hibernate.type.descriptor.java.BlobTypeDescriptor.unwrap(BlobTypeDescriptor.java:47)
at org.hibernate.type.descriptor.sql.BlobTypeDescriptor$4$1.doBind(BlobTypeDescriptor.java:101)
at org.hibernate.type.descriptor.sql.BasicBinder.bind(BasicBinder.java:91)
at org.hibernate.type.AbstractStandardBasicType.nullSafeSet(AbstractStandardBasicType.java:283)
at org.hibernate.type.AbstractStandardBasicType.nullSafeSet(AbstractStandardBasicType.java:278)
at org.hibernate.type.AbstractSingleColumnStandardBasicType.nullSafeSet(AbstractSingleColumnStandardBasicType.java:89)
at org.hibernate.persister.entity.AbstractEntityPersister.dehydrate(AbstractEntityPersister.java:2184)
at org.hibernate.persister.entity.AbstractEntityPersister.insert(AbstractEntityPersister.java:2430)
at org.hibernate.persister.entity.AbstractEntityPersist