Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Antaeus.
The gallery
Heracles wrestling Antaeus (Attic red-figure calyx krater)
Euphronios (painter), c. 515–510 BC
On this celebrated Attic red-figure calyx krater signed by the pioneer painter Euphronios, Heracles pins the Libyan giant Antaeus to the ground in a sprawling, anatomically charged wrestling match. Antaeus, son of Poseidon and Gaia, was invincible so long as he touched his mother the Earth, forcing every passing stranger to wrestle him to the death; the painter shows Heracles already mastering the unkempt, contorted giant — the prelude to lifting him bodily off the ground to break his strength. The two combatants' interlocked, straining bodies make this one of the masterpieces of early red-figure vase-painting. Now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (G103).
Hercules and Antaeus
Antonio del Pollaiuolo, c. 1475
This small but ferocious panel by the Florentine Antonio del Pollaiuolo, part of a series on the labours and deeds of Hercules, captures the decisive instant of the myth: Hercules has hoisted the giant Antaeus clear of the earth, severing him from the source of his strength — his mother Gaia, who renewed his power at every contact with the ground. Antaeus arches backward in agony, arms flung wide, as the hero crushes the life from him in a violent embrace. Pollaiuolo's obsessive study of the male body in extreme exertion makes the picture a Renaissance manifesto on movement and anatomy. Now in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
Hercules fighting with Antaeus
Francisco de Zurbarán, 1634
Painted by Francisco de Zurbarán for the Hall of Realms in Philip IV's Buen Retiro palace, this canvas belongs to a cycle of ten Labours of Hercules conceived as a mythic genealogy for the Spanish monarchy. Against a dark, smoky ground Hercules grapples the giant Antaeus from behind, lifting him from the earth to deny him the regenerating touch of his mother Gaia. Zurbarán renders the two muscular bodies with tenebrist drama, the hero's resolve set against the giant's failing struggle. Now in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.