Hercules Strangling the Nemean Lion

Rubens was 62 in 1639 and gout had been taking his right hand away from him for years. He had just delivered an enormous job for Philip IV of Spain, dozens of mythological scenes for the king's hunting lodge outside Madrid, most of them enlarged by assistants from his own small sketches, and in 1639 another Madrid commission arrived, this time for hunting pictures. This panel may belong to that job. It is an oil sketch, 23 by 39 centimetres, showing the first of the twelve labours, Hercules killing the lion of Nemea with his arms because no blade would go through its hide. Red chalk lines are still visible under the thin paint, and the brown ground of the panel does the work of the shadows. Rubens died in May 1640.