Hercules and Antaeus (Hans Baldung)
Hercules and Antaeus is a painting by the painter Hans Baldung from 1531. The painting came in 1892 as a gift from Edward Habich to the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Kassel .
Image description
Antaeus challenges Hercules to an unequal battle. The giant Antäus, on the left in Baldung's picture , constantly gains new strength through the connection with his mother Gaea , the earth. The bearded Hercules on the right uses a lever handle in a bent and twisted position , with which he wants to detach his opponent from the earth in order to cut off his power supply. With extreme tension and exertion of strength, Hercules, with the determined facial expression of the winner, embraces the already lifted, already pale and yielding Antaeus, in order to crush and kill him. Baldung represents the moment of Antaeus detachment from the earth. Only the tip of his right foot touches the ground. The desperate expression on his face suggests impending defeat and death.
The abundant painterly elaboration of the three-dimensional definition and the battle scene, as well as the selection of unrealistic, natural colors, such as pale white-gray of the naked Antaeus versus the pinkish-red brown of Hercules dressed in the fur of the Nemean lion , increases the eerie and fantastic moment of the picturesque scene.
classification
Works of this late Renaissance style introduced Mannerism .
Hans Baldung followed up on depictions of the early Italian Renaissance , which he modeled on the unclothed fighter Antaeus. He also processed elements of the Greek wrestling match Pale . On the board, Hans Baldung describes the battle between Hercules and his opponent, the belligerent and murderous Antaeus, son of mother earth Gaea. According to humanistic ideas, the battle of the ancient hero is a victory over the lower earthly forces. Baldung's work is an allegory of bravery .
literature
- Old Masters Picture Gallery at Wilhelmshöhe Palace . 2nd Edition. Westermann. Braunschweig 1982, pp. 98-99.
- Anja Schneckenburger Broschek: Old German painting. The panel paintings and altars from the 14th to 16th centuries in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister and in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Kassel . Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Kassel, Kassel 1997, pp. 34–38.
- Julia Carrasco: Hans Baldung Griens "Hercules and Antaeus" (1531). New thoughts on references within his work. In: Yearbook of the Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel 2015 , Petersberg 2017, pp. 78–83.