The Choice of Hercules

1596

Oil on canvas · Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

The central ceiling painting of the Camerino, a small private study in Palazzo Farnese in Rome that Annibale decorated in 1595–97 for Cardinal Odoardo Farnese. It was later removed and taken to Parma, then to Naples.

Pleasure, at right, points to cards, music and theatre masks in a green, flowery setting.
Virtue, at left, points up a hard, rocky path toward Pegasus.
A laurel-crowned poet waits to record the hero’s fame.
The programme was devised by the palace librarian, Fulvio Orsini.

In a Greek parable told by Prodicus and retold by Cicero, the young Hercules meets Virtue and Pleasure at a fork in the road and chooses the harder way.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain