Atlas and the Hesperides

In the version told by Apollodorus, Hercules got the golden apples of the Hesperides by a trick. For his eleventh labour he had to bring back apples from the tree the nymphs kept in their garden, and on the advice of Prometheus he did not go for them himself. He asked Atlas, the Titan who held up the sky, to fetch them, and took the sky on his own shoulders while he waited. Atlas came back with three apples and said he would deliver them himself. Hercules agreed and asked only that Atlas hold the load for a moment while he put a pad on his head. Atlas laid the apples on the ground and took the sky back, and Hercules picked them up and left. Sargent leaves Hercules out. His Atlas kneels alone under a vast dark globe of the heavens, painted with stars and the figures of the constellations, with the claws of the Crab spread just above his bowed head. The nymphs sleep around him on the grass, and one of them, lower right, still has a golden apple in her hand.