Hercules

Almost everything Piero della Francesca left behind is sacred, altarpieces and church frescoes of grave, still figures. This Hercules is the exception, the only surviving work he made on a mythological subject, and he painted it on the wall of his own family house in Sansepolcro, the small Tuscan town where he was born and died. He gave the hero the body of a young man rather than the usual bearded strongman, club in one hand, lion skin knotted at his shoulder. The steep floor tilts because the figure once sat high in a corner of the room, meant to be seen from below. Detached from the wall in the 1860s and sold in 1903, it is the only painting by Piero anywhere in America.