Cleveland Museum of Art

Hercules at the Crossroad

Albrecht Dürer

Date

c. 1498

Medium

engraving

Culture

Germany, late 15th-early 16th century

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

In his journal, Albrecht Dürer referred to this enigmatic engraving as “the Hercules,” but the image is not a typical representation of the mythological hero’s 12 labors. The subject derives from a Greek parable, where Hercules decides between a life of pleasure or one of virtue. The moral dispute plays out here as a battle between two personifications, Virtue, wielding a club, and Pleasure, lying with a satyr. Hercules’s crossroad is a copse of trees between two paths: the ascent to civilization at left (pleasure?), or the winding river to the wilderness at right (virtue?). The rooster on the helmet of Hercules in this image may symbolize the hero's valor.

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