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Hercules and Omphale

Creator

Italian Artist · 1638–1721

The determining influence on Luigi Garzi's style occurred at age fifteen, when he entered the Roman workshop of Andrea Sacchi. Sacchi was the chief representative of Roman Baroque painting's classicizing strain, which had originated with Alessandro Algardi and Nicolas Poussin. Garzi's classical training remained the core of his style throughout his career. His early works also display the impact o

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Date: about 1700–1710
Medium: Oil on canvas
Culture: Italian
Department: Paintings
Institution: Getty Museum

At the center of this lush pleasure scene lounges Omphale, queen of Lydia, an ancient country bordering on the Aegean. After she bought Hercules, wearing his lion's pelt at the left, as a slave and her lover, he served her for three years, ridding the land of robbers and other pests and fathering at least three of her sons. In Luigi Garzi's mythological picture, ancient architecture mingles with contemporary clothing of the early 1700s. Despite the splendor of the architecture, Garzi achieved an intimate effect, partly through the many anecdotal elements: women lean in over the wall, a child plays with a tiny dog, and putti frolic to the music of Hercules's tambourine. Garzi successfully combined these light-hearted elements, typical of the Rococo, with High Baroque's physicality and grandness of gesture.

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