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Baby Hercules Strangling Serpents Sent by Hero
Joshua Reynolds • Painting, 1786, 303×297 cm
Description of the artwork «Baby Hercules Strangling Serpents Sent by Hero»
"Baby Hercules, strangling snakes sent by Hero" - one of the three allegorical canvases ordered by Catherine II Reynolds and her favorite Prince Potyomkin. Two other paintings delivered by sea to St. Petersburg one year later - "Cupid unleashes the belt of VenusAnd "Abstinence Scipio African".
On the historical value of allegories of Reynolds
Historical painting artist considered the highest of art genres. It should be borne in mind that in the XVIII century. historical ones often included plots on mythological themes, ancient allegories were widely used in painting. The meaning of the allegory concluded in the film “Baby Hercules Strangling the Serpent,” Joshua Reynolds himself outlined in a letter to Grigory Potyomkin: the small power of little Hercules is very similar to the power of the young Russian state.
In both Britain and Russia, the very fact that the canvas was commissioned by the Russian empress to the head of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts was seen as a diplomatic breakthrough, as evidence of the strengthening of ties between the two largest empires. It is symbolic that even the ship that brought the “Baby Hercules strangling snakes” to St. Petersburg in 1788 was called “Friendship”. It is known that Catherine appointed a price of 1,500 guineas for the painting and, as a token of appreciation, presented Reynolds a snuffbox decorated with her portrait and sprinkled with diamonds.
The artistic merits of Reynolds’s painting “The Baby Hercules Strangling Serpents”
Remaining to the end of his days an avid fan of classic Italian painting, Reynolds inherited much from her: in particular, the ability to carefully build a multi-figure composition and ability through the developed system of gestures and poses to “play” the dramatic relationship between the characters, as can be seen in “Infant Hercules, suffocating snake. " Warm red-brown coloring (unfortunately, not preserved to the present day in its original form) and the workshop of cut-off modeling of volumes are the most powerful artistic aspects of the painting.
Prototypes of characters from Reynolds
Often, Reynolds depicts real characters in the entourage of mythological circumstances on his allegorical canvases. "Baby Hercules ..." in this sense, too, was no exception. So, the goddess Hera in his picture has a recognizable face of the British tragic actress Sarah Siddons (previously Reynolds wrote her in the image of the muse of Tragedy), and the soothsayer Tiresias reminds a friend of Reynolds, a literary critic of the Enlightenment, the “English Voltaire” of Samuel Johnson, the remarkable characteristic portraits of which Reynolds also wrote repeatedly (1, 2, 3).
Author: Anna Yesterday
On the historical value of allegories of Reynolds
Historical painting artist considered the highest of art genres. It should be borne in mind that in the XVIII century. historical ones often included plots on mythological themes, ancient allegories were widely used in painting. The meaning of the allegory concluded in the film “Baby Hercules Strangling the Serpent,” Joshua Reynolds himself outlined in a letter to Grigory Potyomkin: the small power of little Hercules is very similar to the power of the young Russian state.
In both Britain and Russia, the very fact that the canvas was commissioned by the Russian empress to the head of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts was seen as a diplomatic breakthrough, as evidence of the strengthening of ties between the two largest empires. It is symbolic that even the ship that brought the “Baby Hercules strangling snakes” to St. Petersburg in 1788 was called “Friendship”. It is known that Catherine appointed a price of 1,500 guineas for the painting and, as a token of appreciation, presented Reynolds a snuffbox decorated with her portrait and sprinkled with diamonds.
The artistic merits of Reynolds’s painting “The Baby Hercules Strangling Serpents”
Remaining to the end of his days an avid fan of classic Italian painting, Reynolds inherited much from her: in particular, the ability to carefully build a multi-figure composition and ability through the developed system of gestures and poses to “play” the dramatic relationship between the characters, as can be seen in “Infant Hercules, suffocating snake. " Warm red-brown coloring (unfortunately, not preserved to the present day in its original form) and the workshop of cut-off modeling of volumes are the most powerful artistic aspects of the painting.
Prototypes of characters from Reynolds
Often, Reynolds depicts real characters in the entourage of mythological circumstances on his allegorical canvases. "Baby Hercules ..." in this sense, too, was no exception. So, the goddess Hera in his picture has a recognizable face of the British tragic actress Sarah Siddons (previously Reynolds wrote her in the image of the muse of Tragedy), and the soothsayer Tiresias reminds a friend of Reynolds, a literary critic of the Enlightenment, the “English Voltaire” of Samuel Johnson, the remarkable characteristic portraits of which Reynolds also wrote repeatedly (1, 2, 3).
Author: Anna Yesterday
