Hercules and the Hydra (Pollaiuolo)

It is assumed that both these are miniature copies by the artist of two out of the three enormous (some 12 feet square) paintings on canvas of the Labours of Hercules commissioned from Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo by Piero di Cosimo de' Medici for the Sala Grande of the Palazzo Medici in the 1460s, which have now been lost.

They were perhaps commissioned by Piero di Cosimo de' Medici rather than his father, and were on cloth, still relatively unusual in Florence at this date.

[5] In 1494, Antonio Pollaiulo wrote a letter to Gentil Virginio Orsini from Rome, which was at the time in the grip of an outbreak of plague, asking to be allowed home to Tuscany and hoping the Medicis would consent to the request because – "34 years ago I made the Labours of Hercules which are in the hall of their palace, made by me and my brother.

They show the influence of the Neoplatonic Academy, harking back to classical art and interpreting Greek and Roman myth in the light of Christian philosophy.

One relates to Antonio's bronze sculpture Hercules slaying Antaeus, which was commissioned by Lorenzo around 1475 and is now in the Museo nazionale del Bargello.

Hercules and the Hydra (c. 1475) by Antonio del Pollaiuolo
Hercules slaying Antaeus : Hercules found that each time he felled Antaeus, he got up again, renewed by contact with the earth – Gaia, his mother, refreshing him – so Hercules had to hold him off the ground while squeezing him to death