.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
After the composition by Cranach, of which many versions are known.
Hercules, having killed his friend Phitus in a fit of rage, was sold as punishment by Mercury to the Lydian Queen Omphale, whom he had to serve for three years. His humiliation was completed when Omphale required him to wear women's clothes and perform women's work, although she later alleviated his lot by becoming his lover. Cranach's depiction of the subject, rare in that it does not show Hercules and Omphale as lovers, may have been influenced by a lost painting of the same subject, perhaps by Jacopo de' Barbari, recorded by Andres Meinhart as being at the Wittenberg court by 1507.
Hercules, having killed his friend Phitus in a fit of rage, was sold as punishment by Mercury to the Lydian Queen Omphale, whom he had to serve for three years. His humiliation was completed when Omphale required him to wear women's clothes and perform women's work, although she later alleviated his lot by becoming his lover. Cranach's depiction of the subject, rare in that it does not show Hercules and Omphale as lovers, may have been influenced by a lost painting of the same subject, perhaps by Jacopo de' Barbari, recorded by Andres Meinhart as being at the Wittenberg court by 1507.