print
- Museum number
- 1859,0709.2425
- Title
- Object: Hercules rejects Pleasure and Chuses Virtue
- Description
-
Hercules standing in a landscape, leaning on his club with his cheek on his left hand, his body inclined towards Pleasure, portrayed as a woman reclining invitingly on the ground beneath a tree to right, with a dish, cup and amphora decorated with a Bacchanalian scene, but looking earnestly to left at Virtue, another woman who stands fully clothed in profile addressing him, pointing towards a path ascending a mountain in the background, with a sheathed sword in her right hand, a helmet on the rock beside her; in a facsimile frame with scroll-work; after Mattheis. 1713
Engraving
- Production date
- 1713
- Dimensions
-
Height: 358 millimetres (sheet)
-
Height: 283 millimetres
-
Width: 502 millimetres (sheet)
-
Width: 230 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- For information on the commission, production and iconography of the Matteis's painting which is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, see: Sheila O'Connell, 'Lord Shaftesbury in Naples, 1711-1713' in Walpole Society LIV (1988), pp. 149-219.
See 1859,0709.2419: this is one of seven plates advertised for sale by Gribelin's son in 1735, but produced separately from the other six, which form a set.
For another Shaftsbury related print of this composition see 1896,1230.268
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1859
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1859,0709.2425
