Hercules and Antaeus

Author: Rosie Razzall

In some versions of the Labours of Hercules, during the eleventh task the hero had to defeat the half-giant Antaeus in a wrestling match.^[1] Antaeus would retain his strength as long as some part of his body was in contact with the ground, so Hercules killed him by holding him aloft and crushing him, preventing him from touching the earth with his feet. This drawing shows Hercules from behind with his feet firmly planted, gripping Antaeus, whose slack features and limply dangling legs suggest that he has already lost the fight.

The subject of Hercules and Antaeus was rarely explored in antique sculpture,^[2] probably because that part of the narrative was only occasionally included in classical texts, but several fifteenth-century artists did make representations of the subject. The sculptor Antonio del Pollaiolo (1431/2-1498) made several bronzes of Hercules and Antaeus, among them the version in Florence,^[3] where the two combatants struggle face to face, and a painting on panel, also in Florence.^[4] Later, Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) made drawings of Hercules and Antaeus, likewise showing the pair face to face, as well as Hercules grasping Antaeus from behind, the preference in the few known antique representations. Pollaiolo in particular took advantage of the plasticity and three-dimensionality of bronze to emphasise the dynamism of the physical struggle, with the legs of the half-giant flailing behind and Hercules bending backwards to hold him up in the air. In contrast, the present drawing, dating several decades earlier, is curiously calm and static: Antaeus’ right leg falls implausibly in front of Hercules’s thigh, and the strongest expression is found not in the bodies but in the half-giant’s lolling face and mouth.^[5] The drawing is not a study after any known prototype, and Degenhart/Schmitt believe it to be of the artist’s own invention, though they attribute it to Pisanello’s workshop rather than the artist himself.^[6] They also note that Hercules bears the incongruous addition of a satyr’s tail, and wonder if the artist may have had half an eye on Bacchic subjects.^[7] A fresco cycle by Masolino (1383-1447) in the Palazzo of Cardinal Giordano Orsini in Rome, painted at the same time but now lost, included Hercules and Antaeus face to face in a duel, and might have been a source of inspiration to the artist of this sheet.^[8]

On the verso is a study in metalpoint, barely visible, showing the head of a youth. Degenhart and Schmitt believe that this small study could be autograph,^[9] though they note that it is hardly possible to judge the attribution from such faint mark-making. A similarly indistinct study of a man’s head in profile appears at the upper corner of a sheet of costume studies in Bayonne,^[10] attributed to Pisanello by Fossi Todorow^[11] and to his workshop by Degenhart and Schmitt.^[12]

Despite the seventeenth-century inscription that appears on other sheets belonging to Pisanello's taccuino di viaggio (traveller’s notebook), the complicated history of the book meant that this sheet was previously disputed as one of its pages.^[13] Degenhart/Schmitt’s comprehensive examination of this taccuino in 2004 finally acknowledged the drawing as part of the book, its pages now dispersed across several collections.^[14] The notebook was passed from Gentile da Fabriano (c.1375-1427) to Pisanello and added to subsequently by students in his workshop, especially during his time in Rome after 1431/32 when he was working on the frescoes in the Basilica of St John Lateran. Many of the pages in the book are copies after the antique which Pisanello must have encouraged his students to make while in Rome, and such attention to antiquity may have prompted the draughtsman of this sheet to attempt their own version of the classical duel. Five pages from the taccuino are now in Rotterdam.^[15] Like many of the sheets, this drawing must have been trimmed. The pages vary in their dimensions and little evidence remains of any stitching holes.