The Death of Hercules

Zurbarán painted The Death of Hercules around 1634 as one of his Hercules series for the Buen Retiro Palace's Hall of Realms. The subject depicts the hero's final agony — poisoned by the garment given to him by his wife Deianira, not knowing it was soaked in the blood of the centaur Nessus — his body consumed by the burning poison before his eventual apotheosis. The dying Hercules gave Zurbarán occasion to depict extreme physical suffering within his monumental figure style, the classical hero's agony rendered with the same concentrated attention he brought to Christian martyrdom. The painting demonstrates his ability to translate the psychological and physical conditions of suffering — sacred or classical — into images of compelling emotional power.

The writhing figure of Hercules on the pyre is rendered with dramatic tenebrism, the flames and the hero's contorted body creating a composition of physical agony that parallels Zurbarán's martyrdom paintings.