0530HerculesChoice

0530HerculesChoice_Benvenuti

Xenophon Memorabilia 2.1.21-34
Hesiod Works and Days 287 ff.
Wikipedia commons

Pietro Benvenuti, "Hercules at the Crossroads", 1817-1829, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, in Salonicino di Ercole

No depiction of Virtue, per se. Rather, Minerva asserts herself to pull Hercules from the lusty girl hanging on his leg and the naughty cupids tugging at the Nemean Lion skin all threatening to mire him in vice.

Compare to
Annibale Carracci,
N. Poussin,
among many others

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.