Pompeo Batoni's 'The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents' (c. 1743) captures the mythological moment when the baby Hercules — the illegitimate son of Zeus whom the jealous Hera sought to kill — effortlessly throttles with each chubby hand one of the two serpents sent to his cradle. The muscular child, glowing with early-Rococo light against a stormy background, emblematises his superhuman destiny. Batoni was the most sought-after Italian painter of the 18th century, above all for the Grand Tour portraits commissioned by every English nobleman passing through Rome, and this mythological scene is among his finest early works.

Exhibition Venue

Kunsthistorisches Museum

Vienna, Austria