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Hercules Raising his Club: Study for “Hercules and Cacus”
François Le Moyne (French, 1688–1737)
1717
- Medium
- Black chalk, with white chalk, on buff laid paper, laid down on laid paper
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 41 × 24.7 cm (16 3/16 × 9 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Using only black chalk heightened with white to convey flesh tones, François Lemoyne convincingly depicted the hero Hercules in full swing, fully embodied and activated, and positioned surprisingly like a baseball player at bat. One of two known studies for the figure in Lemoyne’s painting Hercules Clubbing Cacus, this sheet powerfully conveys the artist’s graphic skill.
The painting illustrates the 10th labor of Hercules, in which the hero was commanded to bring the monster Geryon’s cattle back to Rome. After discovering that the giant Cacus stole several of the cattle, Hercules clubs him to death.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
