Hercules and Omphale

A young Hercules and the queen Omphale kiss on a tumbled bed under a red velvet canopy. François Boucher painted this early work in the 1730s, and it burns with a passion his later, more refined pictures rarely show.

The story behind the painting

Boucher painted Hercules and Omphale early in his career, likely between 1731 and 1734, shortly after studying under his mentor François Lemoyne. The myth tells of the Greek hero Hercules and Omphale, queen of Lydia. The painting seems to have stayed with Boucher for a time, then passed to Pierre-Louis-Paul Randon de Boisset, to Philippe-Guillaume Boullogne de Préninville at auction in 1777, and to the comte de Vaudreuil in 1787. In the nineteenth century it joined the Yusupov family collection in Saint Petersburg.

What to look for

In a lavish boudoir the lovers are locked in an embrace on a bed, beneath a hastily assembled canopy of red velvet. Scarlet fabric spills from the bed across a Rococo table, knocking over decorative objects. A green velvet cushion with golden tassels has fallen to the floor and now rests under Hercules' feet. Hercules is not the usual muscular hero but youthful, with a barely grown beard. Two small angels play out, as Alastair Laing notes, the relationship between the two lovers. Technical study shows the red canopy was a late addition.

Meaning and intent

Earlier painters stressed Hercules' humiliation and servitude to Omphale. Boucher instead shows mutual desire, and the sensual side of the myth rather than its moral, a choice typical of the Rococo taste for intimacy, pleasure and decorative richness. Unlike Lemoyne's version of the subject, Boucher put the distaff and spindle in the hands of a cupid, leaving the hero free, in Laing's words, to indulge his ardor. Laing called it an indoor picture of hothouse intensity, its colour used to heighten passion rather than to follow the fall of light. Carracci's Hercules and Iole on the Farnese ceiling likely inspired the pose of Omphale's leg.

Legacy

The 1777 sale catalogue called the work in the style of Lemoyne, and in 1910 Alexandre Benois saw in it youth throughout, closer to Lemoyne and even to the frankness of Rubens than to Boucher's mature work. Benois even regretted that Boucher did not stay the vigorous, full-blooded sensualist seen here. The painting remained with the Yusupovs until 1930. After the Russian Revolution and the nationalisation of aristocratic collections it went to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, where it is still on display.