Aided by Eeriboia, Hermes Carries Off the Exhausted Ares from the Sleeping Sons of Aloeus (recto); Sketch of One of the Sleeping Sons of Aloeus (verso)

In book 5 of the Iliad, Homer tells the ancient Greek myth of Ares, god of war, captured by the giants Otos and Ephialtes: “Ares suffered when . . . the sons of Aloeus imprisoned [him] in a vessel of bronze. Ares would have perished had not fair Eeriboia, stepmother of the sons of Aloeus, told Hermes, who stole him away when he was already worn out by the severity of his bondage.”Fuseli, who was a scholar as well as an artist, delighted in flaunting his classical learning. In the background, Hermes lifts the exhausted Ares, whose elegant pose Fuseli appropriated from one of Michelangelo’s late drawings, a study for theColonna Pietà.