In the first of these two articles I showed paintings of Hercules (Heracles) brandishing a large olive-wood club and wearing a lion-skin, as a stereotype of the ultimate high-testosterone uncouth hero. That association was strong enough to make its way into some more Christian images.

In Frans Francken the Younger’s composite painting of Mankind’s Eternal Dilemma – The Choice Between Virtue and Vice from 1633, the upper section of Paradise sets heroes including Hercules, to the left of centre with his trademark club and lion-skin, in an idealised landscape. Above them is an angelic musical ensemble serenading the figures below. This clearly was a Paradise for the artist’s patron, not the common person.

Clubs also appeared in other examples of hand-to-hand combat drawn from classical mythology.

In Peter Paul Rubens’ finished painting of The Rape of Hippodame (Lapiths and Centaurs) (1636-38) the figure at the upper right is just about to bring his club down on this wedding feast that turned into a pitched battle.

Sebastiano Ricci’s Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs from about 1705 uses multiplex narrative to tell the same story. In the left background, Hippodame is seen being carried away by Eurytus, and a centaur in the centre foreground is swinging his club at one of the Lapiths.

Although the original story of the death of Orpheus at the hands of Bacchantes has them club him with their thyrsi, more modern interpretations are content with ordinary clubs.

Louis Bouquet’s The Death of Orpheus (1925-39) transports this scene to a beach, where the naked Bacchantes are armed with clubs, and just starting to tear the body of Orpheus with their bare hands and teeth.

Some earlier paintings of Christian devils show them with clubs.

Painted in 1430-32, Stefano di Giovanni’s St Anthony Beaten by the Devils identifies the saint by his Tau crucifix. Three devils, clearly fallen angels by their wings, are beating him with clubs. Those devils are fairly conventional figures, part animal and part man, with horns.

In contrast, Hercules’ lion-skin developed different associations, and involved other species.

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier’s romanticised view of The Siege of Paris from 1870 combines almost every symbol relevant to the city’s distress, and dresses the symbolic figure of Marianne in a lion-skin against a battle-worn flag.

By the end of the nineteenth century, animal skins had gone from the uncouth to the mildly erotic, as seen in several of John William Godward’s paintings of doing nothing, or Dolce Far Niente.

This first from 1897 returns to a classical Roman setting, and adds a brilliant green parakeet to accompany this woman on a tiger-skin, in her diaphonous dress.

Seven years later (in 1904), Godward painted his more complex version, also known as Sweet Idleness, or A Pompeian Fishpond. More modestly clad, his lone woman rests with her knees drawn up into a sleeping (near-foetal) position on another animal skin, with a peacock-feather fan in the foreground.

A couple of years after that (in 1906), Godward’s beautiful woman is stretched out on an animal skin on marble, a colour-co-ordinated garden and distant Mediterranean waterscape beyond: a far cry from the uncouth Hercules.

If you see a well-muscled man brandishing a large olive-wood club and wearing a lion-skin, you can be fairly certain he is Hercules, or Heracles if you prefer the original Greek. He’s the ultimate high-testosterone uncouth hero, who doesn’t understand why others wear fabrics, and relies on his club to settle all disputes. In this and tomorrow’s article I explore how reliably paintings meet that expectation, and who else wielded clubs and liked animal hide next to their skin.

One of the most unusual summaries of Hercules’ career is this mosaic from Llíria, Valencia, showing each of his twelve labours around its central panel. His club goes with him in every one except that in the centre, seen in the detail below.

There, in the midst of all his swashbuckling masculinity, Hercules is seen holding a distaff and spindle for spinning, and is dressed as a woman, while Queen Omphale sits on his Nemean lion-skin on her throne, clutching his club. This comes from a curious myth of role reversal and cross-dressing, in which Hercules served as a slave to the Queen of Lydia for a year as penalty for murdering Iphitus.

Bartholomeus Spranger’s Hercules and Omphale (c 1585) uses the same exchange of attributes, and plays openly with the eroticism of Omphale’s position. Note also the colour-coding of their skin.

Luigi Garzi’s Hercules and Omphale (c 1700-10) lets Hercules put his spinning gear behind him, as he entertains the court with a song and the tambourine. Omphale seems to be enjoying her new position on the lion-skin, while fondling his club in her left hand.

Byam Shaw ignores the figure of Hercules altogether, showing a triumphant and erotically-charged Omphale (1914) against a background of the twelve labours, in a remarkable reconfiguration of that ancient Roman mosaic.

Elsewhere, there are many depictions that identify the uncouth hero with his attributes.

In Hans Thoma’s Hercules Delivering Hesione (1890) Hercules stands on the beach in front of the early city of Troy, his trademark club in his right hand. A naked Telamon is busy keeping the sea monster at bay by throwing boulders at it, while Hercules is bargaining with the fair Hesione.

In about 1706, Sebastiano Ricci embroidered the story of Hercules Fighting with the Centaur Nessus showing the hero wearing his lion-skin, and his left hand grasping Nessus’ mouth, about to club the centaur to death, while a slightly bedraggled Deianeira watches in the background.

Noël Coypel, the father of the better-known history painter Antoine Coypel, painted Hercules Fighting Achelous in about 1667-69. This opts to show the pair during the first phase of their fight. In addition to wearing his lion-skin, Hercules wields his fearsome club.

Francisco de Zurbarán’s powerful Death of Hercules (1634) uses chiaroscuro as stark as any of Caravaggio’s to show a Christian martyrdom, with its victim staring up to heaven, commending his soul to God. He is wearing the poisoned shirt inadvertently given him by Deianeira, rather than his lion-skin, and his club rests at his feet.