Hercules and Omphale

Hercules and Omphale (1732-35), in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, depicts the mythological episode in which Hercules, enslaved to the Lydian queen Omphale, was forced to wear women's clothing and spin wool while she wore his lion skin. Boucher treats this humiliating episode as erotic comedy, the muscular hero submitting to feminine authority with comic reluctance. The subject was popular in Rococo art for its playful inversion of gender roles and its combination of the male heroic nude with feminine luxury. This early work shows Boucher developing the sensuous, decorative style that would make him the defining painter of the French Rococo.

Boucher renders the amorous mythological scene with warm flesh tones and the soft, luminous palette that would characterize his mature style. The elegant figure composition and the sensuous treatment of the nude bodies anticipate his later Rococo masterpieces.