RENI, Guido
(b. 1575, Calvenzano, d. 1642, Bologna)

Hercules on the Pyre

1617-19
Oil on canvas, 260 x 192 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Ferdinando Gonzaga (1587-1626), after becoming the sixth duke of Mantua, commissioned new pictorial decoration for the ducal apartments. To decorate the galleries halls of his palace of delights, the duke commissioned Guido Reni to make a cycle of large canvases, which have been identified with the Labours of Hercules, now in the Louvre. The four pictures were made between 1617 and 1620 and without some disputes between the duke and the artist. The series is dedicated to Hercules, who was understood as a champion of physical strength and moral integrity and who was held up by modern princes as a model for the exercise of their political power.

The scenes Reni illustrated were the death of Hercules on the funeral pyre; the battle between Hercules and Achelos for the hand of Deianira; the abduction of Deianira by the centaur Nessus; and finally Hercules vanquishing the Hydra, the only canvas that actually represents one of the mythical hero's twelve labours. In each scene the setting is neglected in favour of the monumental representation of the figures, which become the entire focus of the viewer's attention. They derive from the examples of Hellenistic sculpture that Reni would have studied during his time in Rome, and they dominate the picture plane with their powerful anatomies and deliberate gestures.