Study of Hercules

Author: Sarah Vowles

Resting his club on the ground, the demigod Hercules turns to the side. While the anonymous artist of this drawing may have known the Farnese Hercules, which was excavated in 1546, the figural type of Hercules in this drawing is much leaner and more elegant than the muscle-bound hero in the antique statue. It is closer to Hercules as he appears in small-scale Renaissance bronzes, which represent the mythological hero with a slimmer physique, standing in a contrapposto pose.^[1] Cocke’s suggestion that it was based on the Apollo Belvedere does not seem convincing, given the numerous differences between the two poses.

Although this drawing was once believed to be by Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), that attribution has not been accepted for many years. The figure may echo some of Veronese’s figures, such as St John the Baptist of around 1560,^[2] but these similarities are surely circumstantial. Nor can it be linked to any of Veronese’s paintings of Hercules: while the twisted torso is similar to that in Hercules, Deianira and the Centaur Nessus of around 1586,^[3] that Hercules is not only much older and stockier, but carries a bow and arrow, not a club.

Having discounted the attribution to Veronese himself, scholars have attempted to find an alternative attribution for the drawing, which is evidently the work of a highly competent draughtsman. Philip Pouncey verbally suggested an attribution to the Florentine artist Bernardino Poccetti (1548-1612) in 1957, but this is not sustainable. Poccetti’s work tends to be crisper and more linear, while the present drawing has the softness and sensitivity to light which are typical of the Venetian or Veronese Schools. A drawing of Venus and Cupid, also in Rotterdam and probably by the same hand, has also been attributed to Pauwels Franck (1540-1596),^[4] although the handling of chalk in both drawings seems subtly different from that of the Flemish master. Most recently, Meijer has persuasively argued that the Venus and, by extension, this Hercules, are much closer to drawings of the Veronese School than those by Franck.^[5]

The present author would also draw attention to the close similarities in pose between this Hercules and the Neptune painted by Giambattista Zelotti (1526-1578) in the salone at the Villa Emo at Fanzolo, whose upper body is virtually identical to that of Hercules’, although his head is turned in the opposite direction and the legs are mirror images of those of Hercules.^[6] While it is not possible, on stylistic grounds, to confidently suggest an attribution to Zelotti, it is nonetheless highly likely that this drawing was made for a similar decorative scheme in a villa, uniting mythological and allegorical figures whose virtues presented a flattering allusion to those of the patron himself.