Hercules Feeding Diomedes to his Horses

The subject is treated in a gory Baroque manner not unusual in Luca Giordano’s oeuvre, and is one of the Labours of Hercules, when he conquers Diomedes, king of the Bistons, leaving his body to his horses. There is another version of this subject in a private collection, which Oreste Ferrari refers to in his monograph on the artist (first published in 1966). Both Luca Giordano’s canvases would seem to be inspired by a successful painting by Charles Le Brun, now in the Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, which has been reproduced in engravings of the same period. This is one of the artist’s mature works, executed in the 1680s, which shows various influences and a free use of color, reprising, as Andrea Spiriti points out, elements from Rubens and Venetian painting.