ABSTRACT
The Hydra seems to have had a stronger presence in art than in literature across the centuries. Illustrations of the Labors of Heracles, including his encounter with the Hydra, were common in Greek vase paintings from the seventh century BCE on, particularly in southern Greece (Venit 100-101) where the Hydra was regularly depicted with nine heads. Greek myth was a popular subject for artists in the Renaissance, a number of whom saw the conflicts between Greek heroes and monsters as representing the battle of good versus evil, or of civilizing forces taming uncivilized nature. Thus, Heracles and the Hydra provided subject matter for Antonio del Pollaiolo (1475) and Guido Reni (1620), among others. Nineteenth-century French Romantic/Symbolist artist Gustave Moreau employed a more specific, contemporary political allegory in his Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra (1869-76). Moreau presents a youthful Hercules, club in hand, confronting a seven-headed Hydra, while the Hydra’s victims lie strewn about the swampy landscape. Moreau associated Hercules, whom he regarded as a civilizing influence, with French patriotism; his painting likely symbolized the struggle between France, personified by Hercules, and the neighboring Prussians, represented as the multi-headed monster (Lacambre 136-42). Other examples of the Hydra’s popularity in art include a monumental bronze statue of Hercules and the Hydra by Danish Symbolist artist Rudoph Tegner
(1818) that stands on the coast of Helsingør, north of Copenhagen. American artist John Singer Sargent produced a large mural, Hercules and the Hydra (1922), based on the constellation Hercules.
