“Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides depicts one of the last labors of Hercules — the great hero of Greek mythology, known to the Greeks as Heracles. Hercules was ordered to steal the golden apples that Gaia, Earth goddess and mother of Zeus, had given to Hera as a wedding gift. The apples were guarded by a dragon named Ladon, by Atlas the titan who held the earth upon his shoulders, and by Atlas’s daughters, the Hesperides, who were nymphs of the night and lived in a garden located at an extremity of the world. Journeying through Northern Africa and Asia, Hercules fought with the son of the god of war Ares, the sea-god Poseidon, and Prometheus who finally revealed this coveted garden’s location. Hercules obtained the apples by slaying the dragon, represented in Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides as a single-headed serpent. The fresco is one of many in Rome’s catacombs that were painted in very early Christian Rome in a style known as “paleo-Christian.” In paleo-Christian art, both classical and Christian stories are depicted and there is a synthesis of classical poses with a rater simplistic style of painting. Here, Hercules’s stance and naked body with a cloth draped over his arm belong to classical art, entwined around a tree as the serpent is in the story of Adam and Eve. The story of Hercules and the Hesperides is one that painters throughout the ages have revisited many times to tell the compelling story of hero triumphing over adversity.” (SWW)
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