The Choice of Hercules

The scene shows the moment when the young Heracles stands at a crossroads and must choose between two paths: the rough road of Virtue, which leads to glory, and the easy, seductive road of Vice. The subject comes from antiquity and was reworked by humanist tradition as a moral allegory, and here the contrast between the two female figures organises the whole composition into a long horizontal frieze. Beccafumi, a painter from Siena, drew clearly on the frieze Baldassarre Peruzzi painted at the Villa Farnesina in Rome, which suggests a possible visit to Rome around 1512 that probably shaped his approach to composition. The work is dated to around 1520 to 1525, and its original provenance is unknown. It was once attributed to Bacchiacca, but most art historians now give it to Beccafumi, mainly because of its similarity in size and theme to his Deucalion and Pyrrha, another panel of the cassone and spalliera type. It shows how Renaissance painters borrowed classical subjects to convey moral lessons in everyday domestic objects.

Painter

Domenico Beccafumi

Date

1520

Dimensions

60 × 155 cm

Museum

Museo Bardini, Florence

Genre

mythological painting

Depicts

Heracles, vice, virtue

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