- Gallery Text
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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
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- Object Number
- 2000.199
- People
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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
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- 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
- 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
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- 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
- The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.
- Publication History
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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
- Exhibition History
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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: 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
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Google Art Project
- Related Articles
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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
