The Choice of Hercules is a painting by the Italian Baroque painter Annibale Carracci.

Carracci, who was in Rome from the late 1595 or early 1596, was commissioned this work by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese for the ceiling of his camerino in his family's palace.

The work is considered one of Carracci's masterworks[1] for its balanced rendering of a poetical ideal, graphically influenced by the artist's contact with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes and Rome's classical remains, such as the Farnese Hercules or the Laocoön group.

A vigorous and plastic Hercules is depicted with two women flanking him, who represent the opposite destinies which life could reserve him: to his right Virtue is calling him to the hardest path leading to glory through hardship, while on your left, a woman with worldly pleasures, the easier path, is enticing him to vice.

At the top of the hardest path is Hercules reward, Pegasus.