Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra by Gustave Moreau Buy Art Prints Now
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Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Page Created: 30 August 2026 / Page Updated: November 6, 2026
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Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra: Introduction

Hercules does not swing his club. He stands at the left edge of a ravine, almost motionless, while the Hydra rises from the darkness opposite him. Between hero and monster lie bodies that make the danger unmistakable; beyond them, a narrow opening reveals pale sky, distant water and a low sun. Gustave Moreau chose the breath before violence, when looking itself becomes the action. The result is a mythological combat picture built from suspense rather than impact.

At a Glance

  • ArtistGustave Moreau
  • Date1875–76
  • MediumOil on canvas
  • Dimensions179.3 × 154 cm; 226.7 × 201.9 cm framed
  • CollectionArt Institute of Chicago, accession 1964.231, Gift of Mrs. Eugene A. Davidson
  • SubjectHercules confronting the many-headed Hydra during his second labour

Gustave Moreau in context

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. The Exact Painting in Chicago
  3. A Slow Route Through the Image
  4. The Second Labour Without the Climax
  5. Drawing, Sources and Revision
  6. Darkness, Surface and Scale
  7. Moral and Political Meanings
  8. The Salon of 1876: Hercules Beside Salomé
  9. Provenance and the Art Institute of Chicago
  10. Why the Painting Still Matters

The Exact Painting in Chicago

The active work is the Art Institute of Chicago’s Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra, object 20579 and accession 1964.231. Its current record dates it to 1875–76, identifies the support as canvas and gives an unframed size of 179.3 by 154 centimetres.[1][2] Those facts matter because Moreau returned to the subject more than once.

The Musée Gustave Moreau owns Cat. 26, an oil measuring 1.55 by 1.32 metres. Its hero stands differently, although he is likewise youthful and carries a club amid rock formations and dead victims. The museum describes Cat. 26 as an earlier, smaller version of the picture shown in 1876.[3] It can illuminate the development of the design, but its date, measurements and ownership must not migrate to the Chicago canvas. Private variants and studies require the same separation.

Moreau’s Chicago picture is large enough to address a standing viewer bodily. Its present frame takes the total dimensions beyond two metres in both height and width.[2] Yet the composition does not use scale for a crowded battle. It makes the interval between two adversaries feel monumental.

A Slow Route Through the Image

Seen in the exact reproduction, the eye first meets a dark field of rock. Hercules occupies a relatively narrow ledge on the left. He is youthful, almost nude except for a small blue-green covering and ornaments; his upright club brings a red vertical accent near his face. His free arm bends behind him. This posture does not look relaxed, but neither does it announce an immediate blow. He watches.[1]

Across the gap, the Hydra forms a dense, rising column. Its long central neck catches an unearthly light, while other heads turn in several directions. Some mouths open, but the creature does not lunge. The clustered necks make it difficult to isolate one stable body. Moreau places the monster where animal form begins to merge with the rock and shadow around it.

The foreground changes the encounter from a formal face-off into a mortal test. One pale corpse lies on its back near the centre; another body folds against the right-hand rocks. Fragments and bones emerge from the lower gloom. These are the Hydra’s previous victims, evidence of repeated failure before Hercules arrived. The Art Institute also notes the swamp-like setting and decomposing remains as key parts of the scene.[1]

At the centre-left, the ravine opens towards a distant horizon. The small disc of the sun and muted expanse of water provide the painting’s broadest light. Hercules stands closer to this opening; the Hydra is backed by a darker wall. That contrast is observable, but its moral meaning is an interpretation rather than a neutral fact. The rocks meanwhile act like wings of a stage, containing both figures and preventing an easy escape for the gaze.

Move from the pale distance back to the club, then across the dead bodies to the Hydra’s lit neck. The composition repeatedly directs vision along the space that separates the living opponents. Moreau has made a void carry dramatic weight.

The Second Labour Without the Climax

In the myth, Hercules must perform twelve labours. The killing of the Lernaean Hydra is the second. The museum’s account describes the creature as an aquatic, many-headed serpent associated with the marsh near Lerna; one head is immortal.[1][3] Moreau provides enough attributes to identify the episode—hero, club, monster and victims—without illustrating every stage of the traditional narrative.

That decision keeps myth from overtaking the picture. A viewer does not need to rehearse the entire labour before noticing how unusually still the encounter is. There is no severed neck, no rushing body and no victorious pose. The outcome familiar from the story has not yet entered the visible moment.

Hercules’ calm is therefore not proof that the danger is slight. The remains around him insist on its severity. Nor does the Hydra’s immobility make it passive: seven possible directions of attack are compressed into one vertical mass. By withholding collision, Moreau allows anticipation to last. Knowledge that Hercules will win sits uneasily beside the painting’s refusal to show how.

This emphasis connects the work with Oedipus and the Sphinx, Moreau’s Salon breakthrough of 1864. Both subjects oppose a solitary young man to a composite monster, and both pause at a decisive test. The differences are equally revealing. Oedipus and the Sphinx touch and stare at close range; Hercules and the Hydra remain apart, divided by landscape and death.

Drawing, Sources and Revision

Moreau developed the composition through repeated studies rather than a single preliminary outline. A finished preparatory sheet in the Art Institute is especially informative. On a cream sheet toned light brown, he combined graphite with two colours of ink, brushed brown shading and touches of lead white that have since discoloured. The study already establishes the dark, enclosed setting and the opposing zones of illumination.[4]

The same source records important changes. The drawn Hercules is craggier and less idealised than the body chosen for the canvas. Moreau consulted ancient Greek sculpture when reshaping the hero, while studies of venomous snakes in scientific publications informed the Hydra’s individual heads. The invented creature thus combines observed reptile forms with a mythic body; Hercules similarly joins a model derived from sculpture to a modern painted presence.[4]

The painting’s method can be followed further through Moreau’s drawings and watercolours. A study is not simply an inferior copy of the oil. Here it preserves a bodily conception that Moreau rejected and a tonal structure he retained. Revision operated through substitution as well as addition.

The current Art Institute description also notes that Moreau made numerous studies down to specific details and drew live snakes at the Paris zoo.[1] Such preparation helps explain the painting’s paradox: the Hydra is fantastical, yet its heads possess enough anatomical particularity to feel alert. Exact looking provided components for an impossible organism.

Darkness, Surface and Scale

Brown, black, deep green and muted red dominate much of the canvas. These colours do not form one flat night. Thin, suggestive passages let rock, marsh and debris blend into one another, while sharper touches pick out scales, jewellery, the club and exposed flesh. The Art Institute describes a combination of loose painterly areas and exact detail.[1] In reproduction, the contrast is strongest around the Hydra, whose body seems both carefully articulated and partially absorbed into shadow.

The pale centre prevents the darkness from closing completely. Its horizontal water and sky cross the otherwise vertical design, giving a distant measure to the ravine. Hercules’ lit torso and the nearest corpse repeat that pallor lower down. The Hydra’s central neck answers it with a colder, narrow illumination. Light therefore touches hero, victim and monster rather than belonging to only one of them.

At nearly 1.8 metres high, the canvas amplifies these changes of handling. From a distance the viewer registers the vertical opposition and bright opening. Closer inspection brings out the many heads, ornament and scattered remains. This oscillation between large structure and disturbing detail is central to Moreau’s painting practice: drawn order holds the scene together, but the surface refuses to become uniformly finished or legible.

Moral and Political Meanings

The simplest moral reading treats Hercules as a force of courage and the Hydra as evil. The AIC preparatory-study essay interprets the division of light and dark as intensifying that opposition.[4] The association fits the traditional labour and Moreau’s staging, but it should not become a claim that every colour has one permanent symbolic value across his work.

A more historically specific interpretation links the confrontation to France’s defeat by Prussia in 1870–71. The Art Institute says Moreau may have intended the myth to carry contemporary political concern, with Hercules possibly personifying France and the Hydra possibly standing for Prussia. The scholarly catalogue likewise presents this as a suggestion, not as a documented one-to-one key supplied by the artist.[1][4]

That uncertainty is productive. The painting can register a recent national trauma without functioning as a political cartoon. Hercules’ assured but isolated body, the field of prior casualties and the proliferating monster could have made the ancient episode newly urgent to a French Salon audience. Yet the scene also exceeds that moment. It remains a meditation on courage before an adversary whose threats multiply.

The broader guide to Moreau’s Symbolism, mythology and religion places this ambiguity in context. Moreau’s image can invite moral, spiritual and political thought at once. Interpretation is strongest when it stays anchored to the visible composition and to the conditional language of the museums.

The Salon of 1876: Hercules Beside Salomé

Moreau exhibited the Chicago Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra at the Paris Salon of 1876, catalogue number 1505. It marked a major return after his absence from the Salon since 1869. The work appeared in the same exhibition as the oil now called Salomé Dancing Before Herod, held by the Hammer Museum.[2][3][5]

The pairing showed two different forms of suspended danger. Hercules stands before the fight; Salomé performs before the deadly request is fulfilled. One setting is a dark ravine filled with remains, the other an elaborate ceremonial interior. Both canvases depended on intensive preparation, but their surfaces and protagonists ask different questions. Seeing them only as matching products of a bizarre imagination misses the deliberation behind each work.

Contemporary response was divided. The Musée Gustave Moreau notes that Émile Zola found the two pictures baffling and attacked their remoteness from Realism.[3] The Hammer, by contrast, describes Salomé as critically acclaimed.[5] Such disagreement is part of the significance of Moreau’s return: the paintings compelled viewers to debate whether mythic history painting still had a place in modern art.

Provenance and the Art Institute of Chicago

Moreau sold the painting in 1887 to Louis Mante of Marseille. It passed by descent, appeared in the 1956 Mante sale in Paris, and was with Richard L. Feigen and then Jacques Seligmann before entering the collection of Mrs. Eugene A. Davidson. She gave it to the Art Institute in 1964.[2]

The museum currently lists the canvas as on view in Gallery 223.[2] Gallery status can change, so visitors should check the object record shortly before travelling. The institution also marks the work as public domain and supplies an open digital image. The current home and accession number—not a similarly titled Moreau version—govern all identification.

Its Chicago setting gives the painting a different public life from the smaller Cat. 26 in Moreau’s Paris house-museum. Together, the surviving versions and drawings reveal an artist who revisited a central confrontation while continuing to alter pose, scale and emphasis. The Chicago canvas matters not merely because it is the largest treatment: it is the work that carried this version of the problem into the Salon of 1876.

Why the Painting Still Matters

Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra turns a story renowned for strenuous action into an image of concentrated waiting. Its monumental dimensions, murky surface and pale distance create physical drama, yet the two living figures remain held in thought. Moreau makes the viewer inhabit the uncertainty that the myth’s known ending would normally remove.

The work is also a strong introduction to his method. Zoological observation and scientific illustration meet a body adapted from antique sculpture. Preparatory drawing controls the encounter, but revision changes the hero. Moral meaning is legible without being exhaustive, and a possible political reference remains open rather than compulsory. Few paintings show so clearly how Moreau could be traditional in subject while making the experience of that subject newly unstable.

Researched works directory

This searchable evidence census was assembled from public museum records and a reproducible Wikidata snapshot. It is not a catalogue raisonné, a claim to complete oeuvre coverage, or a substitute for Pierre-Louis Mathieu's printed catalogue, which was not consulted for this directory.

325 artworks

NameDateMedium
Abstract Study1850Painting
Abstract Study1875Painting
Abstract Study1890Painting
Academic Study of a Man1847Painting
Achilles the Centaur Chiron1859Painting
Andromeda1867Painting
AndromedaDate unknownPainting
Angels Following the Magi1860Painting
Angels following the Three Magi1898Painting
Angels Throwing Flowers on the Vatican1850Painting
Aphrodite, 1871Date unknownPainting
Apollo and Daphne1852Painting
Apollo and The Nine Muses1856Painting
Apollo and the Satyrs1850Painting
Apollo Victorious over Python1885Painting
Apollon and Marsyas1858Painting
Ariadne and Theseus1875Painting
Arion1891Painting
Athenians being Delivered to the Minotaur in the Cretan Labyrinth1855Painting
Autumn1885Painting
Bacchanal1850Painting
Bacchus on the Panther -cart.Date unknownPainting
Bathsheba1875Painting
Beheading of John the Baptist1872Painting
Bertrand and Raton1879Painting
Binding of Isaac1850Painting
Birth of Venus1870Painting
Briseis Departure1859Painting
centaurDate unknownPainting
Centaurs1850Painting
Chimera1850Painting
Chimeras1875Painting
Christ and the Two Thieves1870Painting
Christ at Gethsemane1850Painting
Christ at Gethsemane1875Painting
Christ at Lake Tiberias1850Painting
Christ at the Column1850Painting
Christ Blessing Hist Mother1850Painting
Christ Reliever1850Painting
Circe1850Painting
Cleopatra1850Painting
Cleopatra1887Painting
Danaé1858Painting
Darius, Fleeing after the battle of Arbela, Stops, Exhausted, to Drink from a Pond1853Painting
Darius Flight1850Painting
Dead Orpheus1850Painting
Dead Orpheus1890Painting
Dead Poet Carried by a Centaur1890Painting
Death Giving Laurels to the Winner of the Tournament1859Painting
Death of a Young Crusader1870Painting
Death of Moses1850Painting
Death of Sapho1850Painting
Death of Sapho1872Painting
Debauchery1850Painting
Dejanira (Autumn)1872Painting
Delilah1850Painting
Delilah1890Painting
Delilah1896Painting
Descent from the Cross1850Painting
Diana bathing1900Painting
Diomede devoured by his horses1865Painting
Diomedes Devoured by His Horses1865Painting
Diomedes Devoured by His Own Horses1870Painting
Œdipus the Wayfarer1888Painting
Draft for Sapho1850Painting
Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino1858Painting
Endymion1850Painting
Erigone1865Painting
Eve1850Painting
Eve1875Painting
Fairy in a Cave1850Painting
Fairy with Griffins1870Painting
Fairy with Griffins1876Painting
Fée aux griffons1876Drawing
Femme et licorne1890Painting
Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino1858Painting
Françoise de Rimini1850Painting
Galateac. 1880Painting
Galathea1896Painting
GalatheaDate unknownPainting
Ganymede1886Painting
Gardian Angel of the City1850Painting
Genius of Evil1850Painting
Genius of Evil1875Painting
Golgotha1870Painting
Hamlet1850Painting
Hamlet Giving Poison to the King1850Painting
Helen1850Painting
Helen1880Painting
Helen at the Scaean Gate1888Painting
Helen Glorified1893Painting
Helen on the Walls of Troy1850Painting
Helen on the Walls of Troy1875Painting
HeleneDate unknownPainting
Hercule et les oiseaux du lac de StymphaleDate unknownPainting
Hercules and Omphale1856Painting
Hercules and the Ceryneian Hind1871Painting
Hercules and the Daughters of Thespius1850Painting
Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra1875–1876Painting
Hercules and the Nemean Lion1850Painting
Hercules and the Stymphalian Birds1872Painting
Hercules and Thespius Daughters1850Painting
Hercules at Lake Stymphalia1875Painting
Hercules between Vice and Virtue1850Painting
Hesiod and the Muse1870Painting
Hesiod and the Muse1875Painting
Hesiod and the Muse1891Painting
Hesiod and the Muses1860Painting
Hesiod and the Muses1882Painting
Hésiode enfant1860Painting
Horse Rider1854Painting
Horse Rider1870Painting
Horse Rider and Amazon1869Painting
Horse Riders and Horses1854Painting
Indian Women Poets1890Painting
Interior, Draft1850Painting
Jacob and the Angel1876Painting
Jacob and the Angel1878Painting
Jacob et l'Ange1878Painting
Jason1865Painting
Jason et Éros1891Painting
Judith1850Painting
Jupiter and Semele1889–1895Painting
King Canute and His Courtesans1850Painting
King David1878Painting
L'enlèvement d'Europe1872Painting
La FéeDate unknownPainting
La mort de Sapho1872Painting
La mort de Sapho1876Painting
La Villa BorghèseDate unknownPainting
Landscape1850Painting
Landscape, Draft1850Painting
Landscape (Neighborhood of Étampes)1850Painting
Le Bon Samaritain1865Painting
Le Cantique des cantiques1853Painting
Le Christ et Madeleine (Noli me Tangere)1889Painting
Le Grand Pan contemple les Sphères Célestes1897Drawing
Le Poète et la Sirène1893Painting
Le Soir1887Painting
Le Sphinx1886Painting
Leda1846Painting
Leda1850Painting
Leda1870Painting
Les Chimères1884Painting
Les Plaintes du poète1882Painting
Life of Humanity1875Painting
Life of Humanity1886Painting
Life of Humanity: Salvator Mundi1886Painting
Life of Humanity: The Golden Age, Adam - Evening - Sleep1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Golden Age, Adam - Morning - Prayer1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Golden Age, Adam - Noon - Extasy1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Iron Age, Cain - Evening - Death1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Iron Age, Cain - Morning - Work1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Iron Age, Cain - Noon - Rest1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Silver Age, Hesiod and Orpheus, Hesiod - Evening - Tears1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Silver Age, Hesiod and Orpheus, Hesiod - Morning - Inspiration1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Silver Age, Hesiod and Orpheus, Orpheus - Noon - Song1879Painting
Love Victorious over Death1850Painting
Lucretia and Tarquin1850Painting
Magdalene on Golgotha1850Painting
Magdalene on Golgotha1875Painting
Magdalene on Golgotha1880Painting
Magnolia1864Painting
Martyrdrom1850Painting
Messalina1850Painting
Messalina1874Painting
Messaline1874Painting
Mort de Sapho1900Painting
Moses Exposed1875Painting
Moses Exposed on the Nile1875Painting
Moses, in Sight of the Promised Land, Takes His Sandals Off1854Painting
Moses Rescued from the Nile1893Painting
Mystic Flower1890Painting
Narcissus1850Painting
Narcissus1885Painting
Narcissus1890Painting
Noces d’Alexandre et de RoxaneDate unknownDrawing
Nude Study1850Painting
Nyx, Night Goddess1880Painting
Oedipus and the Sphinx1864Painting
Orestes1850Painting
Orestes1875Painting
Orestes and the Erinyes1875Painting
Orphés1865Painting
Orpheus1865Painting
Orpheus Head1850Painting
Orpheus on Eurydice's Tomb1890Painting
Pasiphaë1850Painting
Pasiphaë1880Painting
Pasiphaë, Grisaille1850Painting
Pauline Moreau as the Virgin1848Painting
Perseus and Andromeda1870Painting
Persian Poet1875Painting
Petrarch After the Triumph1850Painting
Phaéton1878Painting
Phoebus and Boreas1879Painting
Pietà1867Painting
Pietà1875Painting
Pietà1876Painting
PietàDate unknownPainting
Pittacus the Tyrant in War Costume1883Drawing
Polyphemus1880Painting
Poney1870Painting
Portrait of Gustave Moreau by Himself1850Painting
Portrait of Gustave Moreau by Himself1890Painting
Postman and Horses1854Painting
Prometheus1868Painting
Prometheus1869Painting
Prometheus Thunderstruck1870Painting
Prometheus, Variant1870Painting
Rape of Deianira1850Painting
Rape of Deianira1872Painting
Return of the Argonauts1890Painting
Ruines de Rome : le Colisée vu des jardins de l'Angélicum des dominicains1858Painting
Saint Cecilia and the Angels of Music1850Painting
Saint Francis Kissing a Leper1850Painting
Saint George and the Dragon1889–1890Painting
Saint Jerome1850Painting
Saint Sebastian1850Painting
Saint Sebastian1870Painting
Saint Sebastian and the Angel1876Painting
Saint Sebastian and the Angels1850Painting
Saint Sebastian Succoured1885Painting
Saint Sebastian with Archers1875Painting
Saint-Sébastien et l'ange1876Painting
Saint Sébastien soigné par les saintes femmes1869Painting
Sainte Cecilia1850Painting
Salome1850Painting
Salome1872Painting
Salome1874Painting
Salome at the Prison1873Painting
Salomé au Jardin1878Painting
Salome Dancing1872Painting
Salomé Dancing Before Herod1876Painting
Salome Dancing in front of Herod1876Painting
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist1876Painting
Santa Cecilia (Moreau)Date unknownPainting
Sappho falling into the Abyss1867Painting
Semele1889Painting
Semele, Draft1889Painting
Singing Centaurs1850Painting
Slaves Thrown to the Morays1850Painting
Song of Songs （Cantique des Cantiques）1893Painting
Spanish Conversation1850Painting
Spring1850Painting
St. SebastianDate unknownPainting
Study1850Painting
Study1874Painting
Study1875Painting
Study for Jupiter and Semele1889Painting
Study for Moses Taking Off His Sandals1854Painting
Study for Saint Cecilia1850Painting
Study for Salome1874Painting
Study for The Triumph of Alexander the Great1885Painting
Study from Nature1850Painting
Study of a red ibis1900Painting
Sultan1850Painting
Suzanne et les vieillards1895Painting
swinging girlDate unknownPainting
Tea Rose1850Painting
Temptation1890Painting
Tempting Demon1875Painting
The Angels of Sodome1872Painting
The Apparition1876Drawing
The Argonauts1885Painting
The Bad Rich1850Painting
The calvary1867Painting
The childhood of Sixtus V.1853Painting
The Chimera1867Painting
The chimeraDate unknownPainting
The Chimeras1850Painting
The Crowning with Thorns1846Painting
The Daughters of Thespius1853Painting
The Dead Lyres1897Painting
The Decameron1850Painting
The Disciples in Emmaus1850Painting
The Dream Haunting the Mogul1881Painting
The Entombment1867Painting
The Good Samaritan1850Painting
The Infant Moses1877Painting
The Magi1860Painting
The Martyred Saint Sebastian1869Painting
The Mermaid and the Poet1895Painting
The Muses Leaving Their Father Apollo to Go and Light the World1868Painting
The Parca and the Angel of Death1890Painting
The Parcae1850Painting
The Pieridae1875Painting
The Pieridae1880Painting
The Pietà1867Painting
The Plague in Florence1870Painting
The Poet and the Siren1894Painting
The Prodigal Son1850Painting
The Prodigal Son1890Painting
The Rape of Europe1868Painting
The Rape of Europe1869Painting
The Shulamite1853Painting
The Sirens1850Painting
The Sirens1875Painting
The Sirens1882Painting
The Springs1856Painting
The Suitors1862Painting
The Toilette1887Painting
The Travelling Angels1875Painting
The Travelling Poet1890Painting
The Unicorn1885Painting
The Unicorns1888Painting
The Voices1867Painting
The Wandering Jew1870Painting
The Young Man and Death1856–1865Painting
Tomyris and Cyrus1850Painting
Triumph of Alexander the Great1873Painting
Triumphing Church1870Painting
Tyrtaeus1850Painting
Tyrtaeus Singing While Fighting1860Painting
Un Saint au désert1879Painting
Untitled1866Painting
Venice1850Painting
Venice1885Painting
Venus Rising from the Sea1866Painting
Victim1850Painting
Vue de Florence1858Painting
Walk in a Park1865Painting
Water Fairy1850Painting
Womand and Chimera1875Painting
Young Thracian Woman Holding Orpheus' Head1866Painting

Frequently Asked Questions

What myth does Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra depict?

It depicts Hercules’ second labour: the destruction of the many-headed water monster associated with Lerna. Moreau selects the moment before combat, showing the hero with his club, the Hydra and the bodies of earlier victims rather than the labour’s eventual victory.[1][3]

When was the painting made, and how large is it?

The Art Institute dates it to 1875–76. It is an oil on canvas measuring 179.3 by 154 centimetres; with its frame, it measures 226.7 by 201.9 centimetres. Its accession number is 1964.231.[2]

Why does Moreau not show the battle in action?

The painting concentrates on suspense. Hercules and the Hydra look across a charged interval while the dead demonstrate what is at stake. By stopping before impact, Moreau gives the hero’s self-command and the monster’s multiple threats time to register.[1]

What does Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra mean?

It supports a moral reading of courage confronting evil. Art Institute sources also present a possible political analogy in which Hercules evokes France and the Hydra Prussia after the war of 1870–71. Because the museum frames that link as a possibility, it should not be treated as the painting’s only or proven meaning.[1][4]

Where is the painting displayed?

It belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently listed in Gallery 223. Display arrangements can change, so consult the museum’s live record before visiting. Do not confuse it with the smaller Cat. 26 version in the Musée Gustave Moreau.[2][3]

Discussion

Use this evidence-led guide as a starting point for close looking rather than a final verdict.

Share an observation about Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra or a source that adds useful context.

Reader Insights

Close Looking

Which detail most changes your reading of Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra?

Context

How do scale, support, medium or present museum evidence shape the encounter?

Open Question

What remains uncertain when visual inference is separated from documented fact?

Join the Conversation

Add your reading below, keeping observations specific and evidence clear.

References

  1. Art Institute of Chicago, “Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra”:, accessed 30 August 2026.
  2. Art Institute of Chicago API, “Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra” (artwork 20579):, accessed 30 August 2026.
  3. Musée Gustave Moreau, “Artworks on the move”:, accessed 30 August 2026.
  4. Art Institute of Chicago, Maineri to Miró: The Regenstein Collection since 1975:, accessed 30 August 2026.
  5. Hammer Museum, “Salomé Dancing Before Herod”:, accessed 30 August 2026.