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Stumbling along the Virtuous Path with Rubens’s Drunken Herculescharacterizes Christians as warriors inthe struggle against forces of evil.11 InNetherlandish prints from the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries, the ChristianKnight is traditionally confronted by Sin,Death, and the Devil, with some depictions including Lady World and Lust. UllaKrempel suggests that Rubens adoptedelements of the Christian Knight in hisCoronation of a Hero, but the armored figure is not a true Christian Knight becausehe battles different enemies.12 Instead,the virtuous hero’s adversaries – Drunkenness, Lust, and Discord – are closely associated with Hercules. The strongman cannot resist alcohol or women, andthe evil personification that he most commonly defeats in Rubens’s oeuvre is Discord (fig. 3). By depicting The Coronationof a Hero confronting Hercules’s temptations, Rubens indicates that the hero mayalso be interpreted as Hercules.Because The Drunken Hercules depicts the consequences of Vice and TheCoronation of the Hero celebrates Virtue,scholars interpret the pendants as alternate endings to the ancient Crossroadsallegory that originated in Prodicus’s Horai (fifth century BCE) and appeared inXenophon’s Memorabilia (fourth centuryBCE).13 Hadrianus Junius’s Emblemata,published in Antwerp in 1565, illustratesFig. 3 Christoffel Jegher, after Peter Paul Rubens, Herculesovercomes Discord (Envy), c. 1635, woodcut, 61.2 x 37.1 cm.Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, object number RP-P-OB-39.797.Themadossier Deugd en ondeugd 11 On the Christian Knight motif, see U. Krempel, ‘Bemerkungen zur Ikonographie der “Krönung des Tugendhelden”’, in: Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis 24 (1976-1978), 83-86. Saint Paul’s command to the Ephesians6:11-17, that they ‘put on the armor of God’, inspired the Christian Knight iconography.12 Krempel, ‘Tugendhelden’, 85.13 Krempel, ‘Tugendhelden’, 82-93; Rosenthal, Gender, politics, and allegory, 63-112; N. Büttner and U. Heinen (eds.),Peter Paul Rubens. Barocke Leidenschaften, München 2004, 317-320; on the Crossroads allegory, see E. Panofsky,Hercules am Scheidewege, Leipzig 1930.459789087048785.pinn.JDZE2020.indb 4507-09-20 11:37

kendra grimmett Themadossier Deugd en ondeugdand describes Hercules’s fateful encounter in Emblem XLIIII: ‘The Crossroads ofVirtue and Vice’ (fig. 4).14 While travelingalong a road, young Hercules meets twowomen who ‘[attempt] to pull him downthe path of their respective behavior andlifestyle.’15 Vice, pictured as a bare-breasted Venus, accompanied by Cupid, urgesthe club-wielding hero to take the easypath of ‘pleasures and delights.’16 Virtue,represented by the wise, armored goddess Minerva, encourages Hercules toward the arduous path of righteousness.Because he selected the more difficult,but ultimately more rewarding path ofVirtue, the hero, usually known for hisphysical strength, acquired the attributesof mental fortitude and self-restraint.Observing Drunken Hercules’s undignified appearance and lack of control inthe Dresden painting, it is difficult toreconcile that he was also cited as a figure of virtue in Rubens’s time. Nevertheless, seventeenth-century humanists associated Hercules with the Latin nounvirtus, which denoted ‘manliness, manhood, strength, vigour, courage, [and] excellence.’17 In his Iconologia (1603), CesareRipa cites Hercules as the representationof ‘Heroic Virtue.’ The hero’s lion-skinpelt represents ‘generosity & fortitude ofthe soul’; his club symbolizes ‘reason,Fig. 4 Hadrianus Junius, Emblem XLIIII, ‘The Crossroads ofVirtue and Vice’, in: Emblemata (1565), woodcut, 16.4 cm.By permission of University of Glasgow Library, Archives andSpecial Collections.14 H. Junius, Emblemata, Antwerp 1565, 50, 134-135.15 Junius, Emblemata, 134. For English translations of the Latin text and commentary, see Glasgow University,‘Emblema XLIIII. Bivium virtutis & vitii,’ French Emblems at Glasgow, p?id FJUb044 (accessed 1 January 2020).16 Junius, Emblemata, 134.17 J. Woodall, ‘In pursuit of virtue’, in: VIRTUE. Virtuoso, Virtuosity in Netherlandish art 1500-1700, Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 54 (2003), 7. C.T. Lewis and C. Short, A Latin Dictionary, Oxford 1879.469789087048785.pinn.JDZE2020.indb 4607-09-20 11:37

Stumbling along the Virtuous Path with Rubens’s Drunken Herculeswhich governs & tames the appetites.’18 Inthe 1611 edition of his emblem book, Ripaincludes an illustration of Hercules wearing his pelt and holding a spiky club (fig.5). In his left hand are the three goldenapples that the laboring hero stole fromthe garden of the Hesperides.19 Those apples symbolize the three heroic virtuesattributed to Hercules: the moderationof anger, the temperance of greed, andthe generous contempt for delights andpleasures.20These positive attributes promptedChristians, Neostoic philosophers, andpean rulers to adopt Hercules inEuro their ideology and iconography. Standingat a crossroads inspired by Matthew 7:1314, Hercules chooses between the narrowpath to Heaven, where devout Christiansstruggle to bear their crosses, and thewide, pleasure-filled path to Hell, wherea finely dressed couple dances towarddamnation (fig. 6). Positioned betweenTruth and Lady World, the pagan demiFig. 5 Cesare Ripa, ‘Heroic Virtue’, in: Iconologia (1611),god becomes a Christian role model. Sevwoodcut.enteenth-century intellectuals studyingthe Stoic teachings of Seneca, a first-cenCourtesy of the Emblematica Online Digital Collection andtury CE Roman philosopher, valued reaThe Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illison, constancy, equanimity, moderation,nois at Urbana-Champaign.and the acceptance of fate. For Senecaand the Neostoics, Hercules was an exemplum virtutis because he used reason to overcomehis passions at the crossroads.21Themadossier Deugd en ondeugd 18 C. Ripa, Iconologia, Rome 1603, 507. Author’s English translation.19 M. Morford, R. Lenardon, and M. Sham, Classical mythology, Oxford 2014, 572. In Euripides’s version of the myth,Hercules went to the garden, killed the dragon Ladon, and picked the apples himself. According to the traditionrepresented by the metopes at Olympia, the Titan Atlas retrieved the apples for Hercules. Rubens depicted Herculescollecting the apples in a painting at the Musei Reali Torino.20 C. Ripa, Iconologia, Padua 1611, 538.21 M. Morford, Stoics and neostoics. Rubens and the circle of Lipsius, Princeton 1991, 7; Krempel, ‘Tugendhelden’, 90.479789087048785.pinn.JDZE2020.indb 4707-09-20 11:37

kendra grimmett Fig. 6 Pieter Nolpe after Pieter Symonsz. Potter, Hercules at the Crossroads, c. 1623-1653, etching, 40.1 x 52.4 cm. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, object number RP-P-OB-24.075.Themadossier Deugd en ondeugdMany European rulers chose to associate themselves with Hercules because of his goodjudgment, leadership, and ability to vanquish monsters (i.e. threats to the realm).22 In his design for the triumphal entry of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, the new governor of the SpanishNetherlands, Rubens portrays the young sovereign in the guise of Hercules Prodicus (fig. 7).Wise Minerva pulls Ferdinand toward the virtuous path and his resultant military victoryat Nördlingen.23 Although he dutifully chose Virtue, the Cardinal-Infante looks back long-22 A. Georgievska-Shine and L. Silver, Rubens, Velázquez, and the King of Spain, Burlington 2014, 90-95.23 J.R. Martin, The decorations for the Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard 16, Brussels1972, 206-207.489789087048785.pinn.JDZE2020.indb 4807-09-20 11:37

Stumbling along the Virtuous Path with Rubens’s Drunken Herculester Peter Paul Rubens, HerculesProdicus, in: C. Gevartius, Pompa introitus Ferdinandi, pl. 39,(1639-1641), etching/engraving, 31x 26.2 cm.Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, objectnumber RP-P-OB-70.278.Themadossier Deugd en ondeugdFig. 7 Theodoor van Thulden, af- ingly at the figures of Venus and Bacchus. Like Hercules, the ruler is tempted by Lust andDrunkenness.At first glance, Rubens’s pendant paintings represent a dichotomous moralizing messageabout the consequences of Virtue and Vice. However, a strictly negative reading of DrunkenHercules or an entirely positive interpretation of The Coronation of a Hero ignores the relationship between the figures in each composition.24 Lisa Rosenthal argues that the physicalembodiment of allegorical concepts complicates and subverts the allegories depicted.25 InThe Coronation of a Hero, for example, the virtuous knight seems conflicted: he draws Victo-24 Rosenthal, Gender, politics, and allegory, 75; Heinen, Barocke Leidenschaften, 316-320.25 Rosenthal, Gender, politics, and allegory, 70.499789087048785.pinn.JDZE2020.indb 4907-09-20 11:37

kendra grimmettry closer with a hand on her waist, while averting his gaze and leaning away from her.26 Thehero hesitantly embraces Victory, because she so closely resembles temptation: the wingednude is just as enticing as Lust, her seated twin. Here, Rubens paints a man with a loose gripon victory over vice. At any moment the wary hero could succumb to lust, veering off the virtuous path as easily as Drunken Hercules. Maintaining a virtuous lifestyle was difficult, andlapses in temperance were inevitable – as Hercules’s stories make clear. Rubens’s pendantschallenge the idea that a man exclusively chooses either a life of Virtue or Vice. Even themost well-meaning seventeenth-century men could expect to falter along their own paths.Rubens’s Humanized Hercules Themadossier Deugd en ondeugdHercules was the son of Jupiter, the king of the gods, and the mortal queen Alcmene. Whilethe hero’s supernatural strength was undoubtedly part of his divine inheritance, it is unclearwhether his penchant for wine and women stemmed from his pleasure-loving father or hishuman mother. As an artist, antiquarian, and humanist, Rubens studied visual and textualsources recounting Hercules’s triumphs and follies. Rubens’s knowledge of the demigod’slimitations is evidenced in his oeuvre, in his personal art collection, and even in the artist’sdecoration of his own home in the center of Antwerp.During his travels in Italy from 1600 to 1608, Rubens studied, sketched, and collectedimages of Hercules. At the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, the artist drew the Farnese Hercules, athird-century CE marble copy of a bronze statue by Lysippos (fig. 8).27 In his ‘Theory of theHuman Figure’ (c. 1608), a posthumously published essay from his theoretical notebook,Rubens identifies the Farnese Hercules as ‘a work which is perfect in all its points and whichcharacterizes the greatest strength.’28 Despite his impressive physique, the Farnese Herculesrepresents a bone-weary hero, exhausted from his labors. The towering figure leans againsthis club. His head droops in the direction of his downcast eyes. The fatigued-hero motifmust have appealed to Rubens, who owned a carved gem featuring Resting Hercules. Theintaglio survives in a description written by Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc around 1622:[6] Hercules, seated on a rock under a tree, melancholic, his head supported on his elbow, his faceresting on the back of his right hand, his right foot placed on top of an altar against which stand thehead of a wild boar and his club on top of it. At his feet lie the three apples of the Hesperides and hislion skin beside his seat. Intaglio.2926 Ibidem, 71.27 D. Jaffé and E. McGrath, Rubens. A master in the making, London 2005, 92-93.28 P.P. Rubens, Théorie de la Figure Humaine, ed. N. Laneyrie-Dagen, Paris 2003, 54. Author’s English translation.29 K.L. Belkin and F. Healy (eds.), A house of art. Rubens as collector, Antwerp 2004, 294. In 1619, Rubens began hiscorrespondence with Peiresc, a French scholar, antiquarian, and collector. By 1622, they decided to publish a bookon the most impressive surviving gems: Rubens would design the illustrations, Peiresc would write the descriptions.509789087048785.pinn.JDZE2020.indb 5007-09-20 11:37

Stumbling along the Virtuous Path with Rubens’s Drunken HerculesFig. 8 Glykon, copy after Lysippos, Farnese Hercules, c. 216CE (original from fourth century BCE), marble, 3.17 m.Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Photo Credit: Scala /Art Resource, NY.Exactly when Rubens acquired the gemis unknown; however, he may have purchased it during his eight-year stay in Italy.30 During that time the artist likelyencountered several ancient Roman sarcophagi featuring drunken Hercules. InRome, specifically, a relief in the Mattei collection inspired Rubens’s painting of theinebriated hero supported by two satyrs.31Rubens’s treatment of Drunken Hercules echoes the vulnerability and humanity that he saw in artworks such as theFarnese Hercules, his Resting Hercules gem,and reliefs from antiquity. Following hisown advice from his treatise On the Imitation of Statues (c. 1608), Rubens transforms the Farnese Hercules from marbleto flesh, ‘[distinguishing] material fromform, stone from figure-drawing [ ].’32 Inhis Drunken Hercules, Rubens softens the‘steep descents into blackness and shadow’ that characterize the Farnese Hercules’s stone musculature, animating thehard planes of his body with fleshy, translucent layers of color.33 Rubens’s paintedhero also has thicker limbs and a shorter torso. Most remarkably, in his transformation of the classical prototype, Rubenspainted his Drunken Hercules with hair onhis chest, armpits, and groin – a featureomitted from most ancient sculpture, butone that draws attention to the figure’shuman nature. Completing the incarna-Themadossier Deugd en ondeugd Unfortunately, the Gem Book was never finished. Belkin and Healy, A house of art, 261-262.30 Ibidem, 294.31 McGrath, ‘Rubens’s house’, 265.32 P.P. Rubens, On the Imitation of Statues, translation J. Fairweather, in: Wyhe (ed.), Rubens and the human body,99.33 Rubens, On the Imitation of Statues, 99.519789087048785.pinn.JDZE2020.indb 5107-09-20 11:37

kendra grimmettFig. 9 Peter Paul Rubens, detailof garden pavilion with Hercules bust, in Rubens and his sec-ond wife Helene Fourment in thegarden, 1631, oil on panel, 97.5 130.8 cm.Alte Pinakothek, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich,Photo Credit: Erich Lessing / ArtResource, NY. Themadossier Deugd en ondeugdtion, Rubens gives his Hercules the ruddy cheeks and red nose of a drunkard.The artist lived with multiple contrasting examples of Hercules’s virtues and vices. Inaddition to the pendant paintings, the complicated hero decorated Rubens’s house and garden. In a painting dated to 1631, a bust of Hercules appears in an elevated, central positionin Rubens’s garden pavilion (fig. 9). Similarly, a plaster cast of the hero’s head sat over a doorway inside the artist’s home (fig. 10).34 In Jacobus Harrewijn’s 1684 print, the pavilion housesa full-length statue of Hercules, visible through the large, center archway of Rubens’s Italianate portico (fig. 11).35 In all likelihood, Rubens’s student Lucas Faydherbe sculpted the figure between 1636 and 1640 after his master’s design (fig. 12).36 This over-life-sized Hercules,reminiscent of the Farnese Hercules, finds peace in Rubens’s garden.37According to Ulrich Heinen, Rubens created a Lipsian Stoic garden, a retreat from theworries and uncertainties of the chaotic world, where visitors could regain clear judgmentand reason.38 The most important feature of the Stoic garden is its relationship to the outside world: it must have clear boundaries.39 Along the eastern border of his property, where34 Muller, ‘Rubens’s collection in history’, 21.35 The full-length Hercules statue also appears in the Rubens House pavilion in the background of Gonzales Coques’s Portrait of a Couple in the Park from around 1655 to 1660 at the Staatliche Museen in Berlin.36 U. Heinen, ‘Rubens’ Garten und die Gesundheit des Künstlers’, in: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 65 (2004), 103.Faydherbe sculpted busts of Hercules, too. See H. de Nijn, H. Vlieghe, and H. Devisscher (eds.), Lucas Faydherbe1617-1697, Mechelen 1997, 141-142, no. 21, 187-189 (bust Omphale), nos. 59-60, 194-195, no. 67.37 Heinen, ‘Rubens’ Garten’, 103-106.38 Ibidem, 99.39 Ibidem, 100.529789087048785.pinn.JDZE2020.indb 5207-09-20 11:37

Stumbling along the Virtuous Path with Rubens’s Drunken Herculesthe pavilion stands, Rubens had a wall built between his garden andthe shooting ranges of the Kolveniers (Arquebusiers) guild, Antwerp’scivic guard equipped with musket-like firearms. In effect, the Hercules statue turns his back on warfare and violence, represented by theriflemen.40To enter the artist’s garden from the west, visitors must traverse thecourtyard and walk under the monumental portico that Rubens designed. Over the left and right archways, pairs of male and female satyrs hold tablets, inscribed with lines from Juvenal’s tenth Satire (fig.13). The quotations in gilt lettering functioned as the lex hortorum, orgarden law, which conveyed the code of conduct and philosophy of thegarden.41 In this case, the excerpts from Juvenal’s Satires promote theStoic values of moderation, tranquility, and acceptance of fate. The inscription on the right instructs guests to ‘[ ] pray for a sound mind inFig. 10 Bust of Hera sound body. Ask for a heart that is courageous, with no fear of deathcules decorating a that is unfamiliar with anger, that longs for nothing.’42 Rubens knewdoorway in Rubens’sthat the passage continued: ‘Ask for a heart that prefers the troubleshouse (before it wasdismantled duringand grueling Labors of Hercules to sex and feasts and downy cushthe reconstruction ofions of Sardanapalus.’43 In Rubens’s garden, it is preferable to toil like1938), plaster cast.the demigod than to overindulge in worldly pleasures like the Assyrian king.Rubenshuis, Antwerp.Familiar with the entirety of the tenth Satire, Rubens and his fellowLatin school graduates may have discussed how Juvenal promoted themodel of Democritus, the laughing philosopher.44 Seneca, in his dialogue De TranquillitateAnimi (‘On tranquility of the mind/soul’), explains:Themadossier Deugd en ondeugd We ought therefore to bring ourselves into such a state of mind that all the vices of the vulgar maynot appear hateful to us, but merely ridiculous, and we should imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus. The latter of these, whenever he appeared in public, used to weep, the former to laugh: the onethought all human doings to be follies, the other thought them to be miseries.45For Seneca, it is better to laugh at the world’s ills than to weep, because with laughter thereremains hope for improvement. Perhaps it was with Democritus’s hopeful laughter that40 Ibidem, 104.41 B. Uppenkamp and B. van Beneden, Palazzo Rubens. The master as architect, Antwerp 2011, 92.42 Ibidem.43 Ibidem.44 Heinen, ‘Rubens’ Garten’, 134-138. In 1603, Rubens painted Democritus and Heraclitus for the Duke of Lerma.45 Seneca, ‘Of Peace of Mind’, 15:2, in: Minor Dialogs Together with the Dialog ‘On Clemency’, translation A. Stewart,London 1900, 250-287.539789087048785.pinn.JDZE2020.indb 5307-09-20 11:37

kendra grimmett Fig. 11 Jacobus Harrewijn, after Jacques van Croes, Rubens House in Antwerp, 1684, engraving, 29 35.8 cm. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, object number RP-P-OB-55.443.Themadossier Deugd en ondeugdRubens approached the figure of Hercules. In the courtyard between the portico and thegates to the city street, Rubens included a Drunken Hercules on the façade of his studio(fig. 14). The inebriated hero appears in the upper-right section of the frieze, closest to thestreet exit to Wapper. Like the gilt inscriptions, Hercules is supported by a pair of satyrs.Rubens and his guests might laugh at the demigod’s foolishness in the manner of Democritus rather than weep for his failure like Heraclitus.Expanding on Heinen’s interpretation of the Hercules statue in Rubens’s pavilion, I propose that the Drunken Hercules frieze may represent the mind and body of a man who needsto be rejuvenated and returned to reason in the garden. Located beyond the garden’s boundaries, closest to

In the French translation of the inventory, or 'Specification', the paintings are described as: 'Vn cheualier Chrestien couronné de la victoire sur fond de bois' and 'Vn Hercule enyuré sur fond de bois'. Fig. 2 Peter Paul Rubens, The Cor-onation of a Hero, c. 1613-1615, oil on panel, 221.5 x 200.5 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Bayerische .