Hercules, located on the left side of the composition, looks proudly at the viewer after having diverted the course of the river alpheus, fulfilling the challenge made to him by augias, king of elis. The description of this episode in the testament of charles ii as the cleaning of king eristeus's stables is a reference to the stables where three thousand oxen slept, very full of manure, according to pérez de moya, and which, because they had never been cleaned, contaminated the region and prevented the development of livestock farming. Hercules promised to clean them in one day, after obtaining a promise from augeas to receive a tenth of the cattle. The success of the work was due to a combination of cunning and strength that, however, was not rewarded as agreed, since, in the king's opinion, he had almost no work cleaning those stables, because fools reward the forces and work of the body and not those of the soul. The significance of this story within the hispanic iconography of the hall of kingdoms has been seen as an image of the powerful and victorious ruler who liberates the country. In the words of juan miguel serrera, the manure from the stables of king elide must be seen as the representation of the evils that befell spain, the eradication of which was in the hands of its powerful, but at the same time magnanimous, rulers. For brown and elliot, this work could allude to the action of purifying the world of discord. This canvas is considered one of the best in the series. The composition is certainly very well resolved, moving hercules to the side, where he places his powerful figure in a foreshortened view underlined by lighting from the lower left corner. For serrera, the position of the character is somewhat forced, explainable by the height he had to occupy in the room, and which would correct the anatomical exaggerations. In any case, it seems evident that zurbarán devised a human type that was not very idealized, as evidenced by the hero's bulging abdomen or the marked wrinkles on his face, a hercules hispanicus with a countenance that was somewhere between ironic and disbelieving. The disposition of the character seems to depend on a print of hercules due to schelte à bolswert included on the cover of girard thibault's book published in 1628, lâ´académie de lâ´espée, as seen by benito navarrete, who has highlighted the conception of the landscape of rocks and water as a cavernous setting with a quasi-romantic tone. Serrera noted that the river was resolved in a manner analogous to that which appears in the san antonio abad painted for the barefoot mercy of seville (today in barcelona, private collection); and it is also similar to that of the vision of saint john the baptist (barcelona, private collection): all of them executed on similar dates (text extracted from ruiz, l. In: el palacio del rey planeta. Felipe iv y el buen retiro, museo nacional del prado, 2005, p. 153). Object Type: painting. Genre: mythological painting. Date: 1634. Dimensions: 133 × 153 cm (52.3 × 60.2 in). Medium: oil on canvas. Collection: Museo del Prado. Hércules desvía el curso del río Alfeo, por Zurbarán
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