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Gallery Text

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.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
2000.199
People
Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish (Siegen, Westphalia 1577 - 1640 Antwerp, Belgium)
Title
Hercules Strangling the Nemean Lion
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
c. 1639
Culture
Flemish
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/178555

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil with traces of red chalk on cradled panel
Dimensions
23 x 39.2 cm (9 1/16 x 15 7/16 in.)
framed: 40.9 x 56.9 x 7 cm (16 1/8 x 22 3/8 x 2 3/4 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Prince Lichnowsky, Kuchelna and Berlin. Fritz Hess, Berlin-Dahlem (? - 1931); his sale, [Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, September 1, 1931, cat. no. 10]; Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Kuhn, Cambridge, MA (1931-1961) gift; to Charles L. Kuhn III, St. Louis, MO (1961-2000), bequest; to Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, MA.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Gift of Dr. Charles and Nobuko Kuhn in honor of Charles L. Kuhn, Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1930-1968
Accession Year
2000
Object Number
2000.199
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
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Publication History

  • Svetlana Alpers, The Decoration of the Torre de la Parada, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard (1971), vol. IX, p. 274 n. 338, fig. 198
  • Peter C. Sutton and Marjorie E. Wieseman, Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, Yale University Press (New Haven/London, 2004), cat. no. 40, p. 252, color illus.
  • Peter Nisbet and Joseph Koerner, The Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, ed. Peter Nisbet, Harvard University Art Museums and Scala Publishers Ltd. (Cambridge, MA and London, England, 2007), p. 215
  • Anne T. Woollett, Davide Gasparotto, and Jeffrey Spier, Rubens: Picturing Antiquity, exh. cat., J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, 2021), pl. 23
  • Maurice Saß, "The Predatory Core: Peter Paul Rubens and the Hunt", The Art Bulletin, College Art Association of America (December 2024), col. 106, no. 4, pp. 6-32, pp. 18-20, repr. p. 18 as fig. 12

Exhibition History

  • Calming the Tempest with Peter Paul Rubens, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 12/22/2001 - 03/17/2002
  • Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, 10/02/2004 - 01/30/2005; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, 03/02/2005 - 05/15/2005; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, 06/14/2005 - 09/11/2005
  • Re-View: S422 Ancient & Byzantine Art & Numismatics, Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 04/12/2008 - 06/18/2011
  • 32Q: 2400 French/Italian/Spanish, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 02/01/2024 - 08/05/2024
  • 32Q: 2300 Dutch & Flemish, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 09/08/2017
  • Rubens: Picturing Antiquity, The Getty Villa, Pacific Palisades, 11/10/2021 - 01/24/2022

Subjects and Contexts

  • Google Art Project

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Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu