Ercole separa i monti Calpe e Abila

Zurbarán painted this in 1634 as one of ten scenes from the labours of Hercules, all commissioned by King Philip the Fourth of Spain for the great throne room of his new Buen Retiro palace in Madrid. Here Hercules braces himself between two mountains, Calpe and Abyla, the peaks that stand either side of the Strait of Gibraltar. In the old story he tore them apart and let the ocean flood through, opening the passage between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. That was not an idle choice of subject. Those two rocks were the Pillars of Hercules, and they had become the personal emblem of the Spanish Habsburgs, wrapped in the motto Plus Ultra, further beyond, pointing at an empire that now reached across the Atlantic. So a mythical strongman doing a labour is also a piece of royal flattery. Zurbarán, better known for still, quiet monks, gives him a heavy, sculpted, muscular body, lit hard against a dark sky.