Attributed to Gérard DE LAIRESSE (Liege 1641-Amsterdam 1711) - Lot 15

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Lot n° 15
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Attributed to Gérard DE LAIRESSE (Liege 1641-Amsterdam 1711) - Lot 15
Attributed to Gérard DE LAIRESSE (Liege 1641-Amsterdam 1711) Hercules and Omphale Canvas. 79 x 100 cm. (Restorations, faded). In a beautiful Spanish baroque frame with gold ornaments on a brown background. Struck by madness on Juno's orders, Hercules had killed his wife and children. To atone for his fault, the oracle of Delphi condemned him to a year of servitude. He was bought by the queen of Lydia, Omphale, who soon made him her lover, even her husband. But the roles changed. Omphale forced Hercules to wear women's clothes and to spin wool, while she armed herself with her club and adorned herself with the skin of the lion of Nemea. This inversion of the feminine and masculine, that is to say of the order of the world, concerning moreover the very incarnation of the virile force, was interpreted in a comical way by the painters of the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, such as Rubens. Our painting makes it rather a peaceful scene of conjugal happiness. Hercules, head bent, humble and resigned, concentrates on the thread he is pulling from his distaff. Omphale, who is a head taller than him, is looking at the viewer with an arrogance tempered with gentleness. One of his hands leans on the heavy club that putti are trying in vain to lift. The other hand indicates the remains of the lion with which the queen crowned herself. Omphale owes her triumph to love, which is underlined by a flock of little lovers playing around the couple. This is also suggested by the unmade bed and the disordered sheets, whose whiteness bursts against the red and gold harmony of the background. The composition seems to obey a geometrical scheme, as if ordered according to two opposite triangles. This rigor in the construction, combined with the mastery of the brush, translates a great culture. That of an artist steeped in literature, familiar with Ovid and capable of giving a subtle interpretation of a mythological episode. We recognize the spirit of the one who was called "the Dutch Poussin", although born in Liege, Gérard de Lairesse. These curly cherubs that animate the canvas, these heavy hangings that overhang the scene, these architectural backgrounds are his. The figure of Omphale is the same as that of the maenad playing the triangle in a recently discovered Bacchanal, dated 1668. At that time, Lairesse had been living for four years in Amsterdam, where this admirer of Poussin was to help introduce French classicism. He was a schoolmaster there and our painting, if not by him, is by one of his relatives.
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