Hercules between Vice and Virtue

By 1650 Jan van den Hoecke had spent years in Rubens's Antwerp workshop and then in the service of the Habsburgs, painting for the archduke's court in Vienna and Brussels. Here he takes up an old moral fable that court audiences loved: the young Hercules made to choose between two women. One is Virtue, pointing him toward a steep and difficult path. The other is Vice, offering ease and pleasure. Princes favoured the subject because it flattered the idea that greatness comes from hard duty rather than comfort, a fitting message just after the long Thirty Years' War had finally ended. The warm colour and full, muscular bodies are what van den Hoecke had carried out of Rubens's studio. It hangs today in the Uffizi in Florence.