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View at the museum ↗Hercules and Lichas
Filippo Falciatoren.d.
- Attribution
- Filippo Falciatore Italian, active in Naples, 1718-1768
- Medium
- Black chalk with pen and brown ink and brush and blue-green wash on pieced ivory laid paper, pricked for transfer
- Physical dimensions
- 46 × 32.9 cm (18 1/8 × 13 in.)
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. William O. Hunt Fund
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Source rights statement: Public domain
View the museum record ↗From the museum
Filippo Falciatore was a mid-century master who excelled at an ornamental rococo style with baroque flourishes. This rare sheet juxtaposes violently entwined mythological figures with decorative floral motifs. The subject would have been a familiar part of the landscape of Naples; the famous ancient sculpture known as the Farnese Hercules appears in the the Art Institute’s Neapolitan crèche . Here the tragic hero flings his manservant Lichas into the Aegean Sea. Hercules’s wife, Deianira, had sent Lichas to deliver a cloak dipped in the toxic blood of a centaur who had tried to abduct her, believing the potion would keep Hercules faithful. Instead it drove him mad and eventually killed him.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0