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Hercules and Omphale

1607 · Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

mythological

In the first decade of the seventeenth century in Antwerp, expressions of pathos and monumentality bearing an Italian trade mark were strikingly displayed in secular paintings. In these mythological and allegorical compositions with life-size figures the dramatic narrative was clearly portrayed by a limited number of figures with a classicist character. The Hercules and Omphale is the earliest known example in seventeenth-century Flemish painting of a strongly emotional and erotically accentuated depiction of classical subject matter on a monumental scale.

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Hercules and Omphale