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Hercules and Albrecht Dürer's Das Meerwunder
- Renaissance Quarterly
- Renaissance Society of America
- Volume 58, Number 1, Spring 2005
- pp. 1-44
- Article
- Additional Information
This article centers on two images from the life of Hercules and a border painting modeled after Albrecht Dürer's engraving Das Meerwunder (ca. 1498) in a Kyriale produced ca. 1500 for a Dominican convent in Toledo, Spain. It discusses the cultural significance of Hercules in Spain, and Toledo in particular, then presents a contextually sensitive reading of the image derived from Dürer's enigmatic engraving, whose subject has yet to be identified. The image in the Kyriale appears to represent Hercules' once-famous rescue of the Trojan princess Hesione from a sea monster.