Hercules and Omphale

The story here is one of role reversal. As punishment for a killing, the Greek hero Hercules was sold into service to Omphale, queen of Lydia, and made to do women's work while she took up his lion skin and club. Goya painted the scene in 1784, when he was in his late thirties and steadily climbing at the Spanish court, still years from the deafness and the dark visions of his later work. He plays the myth partly for wit: the strongman squints to thread a needle while the women around him look on. The figures are packed close together in a warm, almost sourceless light, and the reddish ground of the canvas shows through the paint in places, giving the whole group its heat.