Hercules and Omphale

Boucher's early works reveal his connections with seventeenth-century art. As a young man he made copies and engravings of Watteau.
His "Hercules and Omphale" was executed under the impression of Ruben's full-blooded, temperamental painting, but the subject is typical if Rococo. Sold into slavery to Queen Omphale of Ludia and doomed to do a woman's work, Hercules suddenly appears as a passionate lover ready to please his mistress's slightest whim.