Hercules Resting (recto) (1595–97): Art, History and Details

Hercules Resting (recto) (1595–97) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Annibale Carracci (Italian, c. 1560–1609).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

To atone for the crime of killing his family, the Greek hero Hercules was required to perform twelve labors. In this final study for a fresco of this subject commissioned by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese for the ceiling of his study in his family’s Roman palace, Hercules rests, surrounded by evidence of his toil: the head of the Erymanthian boar he captured, the three golden apples of the Hesperides, and the hide of the Nemean lion on which he sits. The hero’s pose and exaggerated musculature are a result of the artist’s intense study of ancient models, and emulate specific antique sculptures depicting river gods in the Farnese collection. Carracci also worked with full knowledge of Michelangelo’s frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508-10), and the pose of Hercules may have been inspired by the reclining figure of Adam in Michelangelo's Creation of Adam scene.

Object facts

• Title: Hercules Resting (recto)
• Date: 1595–97
• Creator attribution: Annibale Carracci (Italian, c. 1560–1609)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk heightened with white, squared in black chalk on right, incised (edges of figure)
• Dimensions: Sheet: 35.5 x 52.4 cm (14 x 20 5/8 in.); Secondary Support: 36.6 x 53.3 cm (14 7/16 x 21 in.); Tertiary Support: 38.3 x 55 cm (15 1/16 x 21 5/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1997.52.a

A detail from the museum

The squares drawn lightly over this composition suggest that it was used to transfer the design to another surface such as a full-scale cartoon.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Carracci, Annibale, and Daniele Benati. The Drawings of Annibale Carracci. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1999.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Diane DeGrazia, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2000.
• Gasparri, Carlo, David Franklin, Ingrid D. Rowland, and Sebastian Schütze. From Raphael to Carracci: The Art of Papal Rome. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2009.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.