Hercules Strangling the Nemean Lion

Rubens was a masterful painter of oil sketches, which he used to generate pictorial ideas and display them to his patrons and workshop assistants. This sketch may relate to a commission he received in 1639 for a series of hunting scenes for the Royal Palace in Madrid. It depicts the first of the twelve labors of Hercules: strangling the lion sent by the goddess Hera to menace the region of Nemea, in southern Greece. Hercules donned the impenetrable skin thereafter. In Rome, Rubens had drawn studies of the Farnese Hercules — one of the most famous sculptures of antiquity — and the muscular hero, a human who achieved immortality through his deeds, was a favorite subject. Here Rubens emphasizes the confrontation between man and beast. Aside from some impasto in the lion’s mane and in the torso of Hercules, Rubens painted thinly, leaving visible the ground layer, or imprimatura, whose horizontal streaks enhance the impression of swift movement and action.