Follower of Hans Rottenhammer

After murdering one of his own friends, Hercules consulted the oracle of Apollo, who told him to go into service of Omphale, the Queen of Lydia. Omphale coerced Hercules into spinning and doing her own work while she wore the skin of the Nemean lion, and the two fell in love and married. Although the story provides a comic gender-reversal theme, it is rarely represented in painting before the Rococo period. Northern mannerist artists in the orbit of Rottenhammer favored complex compositions and moments of revelation or discovery, and this artist has imagined the role reversal as one such moment, presumably on the wedding night. The support bears the well preserved mark of Antwerp coppermaker Peeter Stas and the date of 1608.