HeraclesChoice11.0019_Carracci

HeraclesChoice1.0019_Carracci

Annibale Carracci, "Ercole al Bivio," (Hercules at the Crossroads), 1596, oil on canvas, for the ceiling of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome; now detached and mounted Naples, Museo del Capodimonte, Collezione Farnesina inv. Q365.

Carracci recreates in this large ceiling painting the narrative attributed to Prodicus of Athens, and ancient philosopher. According to Prodicus' story (told in Xen. Mem. 2.1.21-34) Heracles found himself in his youthful adulthood at a cross-roads. Two women appeared to him — Virtue and Vice (Pleasure) are shown here as allegorical figures — and each tried to entice the potential hero to follow her path. By choosing Virtue's path, the hero willingly engages the hard path through life.
Carracci's commission was to crown a room full of Heracles iconography with the hero's most enobling moment.

Popular tale in subsequent generations, as well: Poussin, Benvenuti, Handel, etc.

Here the strapping young man is certainly Heracles, appointed with nothing but a club, for he has not yet slain the Nemean Lion. Vice (right) offers the enticements of short-lived gratification, Virtue points to an arduous pathway up a barren slope atop which the winged Pegasus awaits. (Never mind that in strictly classical myth Pegasus is ridden only by Bellerophon.) Pegasus will be ready to convey the hero to Olympus. A shadowy figure in the lower left foreground personifies history, the written record of Heracles' future exploits, among which this moment itself is the first accomplishment.

Carracci's painting stands at the head of many such depictions from the Mannerists through the Enlightenment and beyond.

E. Panofsky, Hercules am Scheidewege und andere Bildstoffe in der neueren Kunst (Leipzig 1930); K. Galinsky, The Herakles Theme: the adaptations of the hero in literature from Homer to the Twentieth Century (Totowa, NJ, 1972), 101 ff., 198 ff., 213 ff.; Flitcroft and Hoare used the Choice of Heracles at Stourhead Landscape Gardens to good effect.