Choice of Hercules

Choice of Hercules from 1636 at a National Trust property depicts the most famous of classical moral allegories, in which the young Hercules is approached by two women personifying Virtue and Vice, who offer him alternative lives of ease and pleasure versus heroic struggle and immortal fame. The Choice of Hercules was a canonical subject of classical moral philosophy, discussed by Xenophon, Cicero, and Prodicus, and was one of the most frequently depicted moral allegories in Renaissance and Baroque painting. Poussin's treatment combined his characteristic classical archaeology — the figures of Virtue and Vice drawn from ancient visual conventions — with a compositional clarity that made the moral choice immediately legible. His mythological narratives balance archaeological fidelity with poetic feeling, and the Choice of Hercules exemplified the kind of elevated moral subject he championed against what he saw as the degraded decorative painting of his contemporaries. The National Trust property holds this as an important example of Poussin's classical moral allegory.

The composition presents the three figures with classical clarity and balanced proportions. Poussin's handling creates a scene of philosophical moral choice.