Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Alcmene.
The gallery
Jupiter and Alcmene
Cornelis Bos (after Michiel Coxie), c. 1537–1555
An engraving from the Renaissance series of the Loves of Jupiter, designed by the Flemish painter Michiel Coxie and cut by the Southern Netherlandish engraver Cornelis Bos. It depicts the central deception of Alcmene's myth: Zeus (Jupiter), having taken the likeness of her absent husband Amphitryon, comes to Alcmene by night — the union that, in the night prolonged threefold, conceives Heracles. The sheet survives in the Rijksmuseum print collection in Amsterdam.
Jupiter in the Guise of Amphitryon with Alcmene
Jan Luyken, late 17th century
A pen-and-ink drawing by the Dutch printmaker and poet Jan Luyken (1649–1712), now in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt. It renders the same pivotal moment of Alcmene's story told by Apollodorus: Zeus assumes the exact form of her husband Amphitryon and is received by the unsuspecting Alcmene. The intimate, small-scale sheet (roughly 158 by 203 mm) treats the divine masquerade as a quiet domestic scene rather than a triumphant mythological tableau.
The Birth of Heracles
Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier, late 18th century
A neoclassical composition by the French painter and engraver Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier (1738–1826) showing the labour and delivery of Heracles. Alcmene reclines as the central figure attended at the birth, with the goddess of childbirth Eileithyia (Lucina) and the cunning servant Galanthis — who, in Ovid's telling, tricks the goddess into releasing the obstructed delivery. The scene illustrates the dramatic difficulty of Heracles's birth caused by the jealous Hera.
The Infant Hercules Strangling Serpents in his Cradle
Pompeo Batoni, 1743
An oil painting by the leading Roman Rococo master Pompeo Batoni (1708–1787) depicting the famous proof of Heracles's divine parentage: the snakes Hera sent against Alcmene's infant twins, which the baby Heracles throttles in his cradle while his mortal brother Iphicles cries out. This episode in the household of Alcmene and Amphitryon first reveals to the family, through the seer Tiresias, that the child is the son of Zeus.