Hercule et les Pygmées

In Ferrara in the 1530s Dosso Dossi was court painter to the Este dukes, and their ruler was named Ercole, the Italian for Hercules. That coincidence gave a Hercules picture a flattery built in. Here the hero has just wrestled the giant Antaeus to death and dropped into an exhausted sleep, and while he sleeps an army of thumb-sized pygmies swarms over him with tiny spears. In the old story he wakes, laughs, and scoops the whole militia up in his lion skin. Dossi paints it under a strange dusk light, with a landscape that seems half-dreamed, the sort of poetic mood the Ferrara court prized. The little warriors are set at real ant-scale, easy to miss against the sleeping giant's arm.