Herkules und Deïaneira

Pollaiuolo made this in Florence around 1470, and the landscape behind the figures is no invention. It is the valley of the Arno, the river winding out toward the city he lived in. The story is grim. The centaur Nessus has seized Hercules' wife Deianira and is carrying her off across the water, and Hercules, on the far bank, draws his bow to bring him down with a poisoned arrow. What people admired then and admire now is the body. Pollaiuolo studied anatomy by cutting open corpses, unusual and half-forbidden work in his day, and you can feel it in the taut, twisting muscles of the hero pulling the string. The panel was later peeled off its wood and laid onto canvas, which is how it survives at Yale.