Weaving Myths: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Labours of Hercules Tapestries in the Renaissance

Abstract

The Labours of Hercules was a particularly prolific motif for tapestries in the Renaissance. The iconographic scheme of the Hercules series synthesized an enormous range of ancient and medieval philosophical and didactic erudition. This paper will examine an episode especially favoured in the sixteenth-century series: the fight between Hercules and the river-God Achelous (Metamorphoses, IX, 1-100). In scholarly literature, the scene has often been interpreted as the battle of Hercules against the Cretan bull. However, this episode was widely superseded by Hercules’ struggle against Achelous, due to the authority of Ovid’s texts. It will delve deeper in the matter by focusing on a curious detail: all tapestries depict Achelous with a human body and a bull’s head. This finding provides valuable new insights regarding this idiosyncratic and complex iconography.