Art Institute of Chicago

Aided by Eeriboia, Hermes Carries Off the Exhausted Ares from the Sleeping Sons of Aloeus (recto); Sketch of One of the Sleeping Sons of Aloeus (verso)

Henry Fuseli

Date

1819

Medium

Graphite and brush and black wash, with touches of charcoal (recto), and graphite (verso), on cream wove paper

Culture

England

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

In book 5 of the Iliad , Homer tells the ancient Greek myth of Ares, god of war, captured by the giants Otos and Ephialtes: “Ares suffered when . . . the sons of Aloeus imprisoned [him] in a vessel of bronze. Ares would have perished had not fair Eeriboia, stepmother of the sons of Aloeus, told Hermes, who stole him away when he was already worn out by the severity of his bondage.” Fuseli, who was a scholar as well as an artist, delighted in flaunting his classical learning. In the background, Hermes lifts the exhausted Ares, whose elegant pose Fuseli appropriated from one of Michelangelo’s late drawings, a study for the Colonna Pietà .

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