Art Institute of Chicago

Hercules at the Crossroads (Jealousy)

Albrecht Dürer

Date

c. 1498

Medium

Engraving in black on off-white laid paper

Culture

Germany

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Renaissance humanists were fascinated by antiquity— its mythic heroes, surviving architecture, coins, and sculpture. Noblemen even demanded that the historians inflating their family trees make them stretch all the way back to Hercules and other demigods. Historical figures were occasionally given mythological nicknames, like the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, who was sometimes known by his supporters as the “German Hercules.” These two Hercules prints by Albrecht Dürer fed the fascination with this hero’s legendary strength, dogged perseverance in the 12 Labors, and tragic, inescapable fate.

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