Hercules kills the north african giant in a new demonstration of his ingenuity and strength, since he had to lift him off the ground to finish off this son of gaea, the goddess of the earth, who made the giant's energies redouble every time he was knocked down: hercules noticing antaeus's deception, in the air he squeezed him so tightly with his arms that he killed him and this was the victory of the fight. This quote from juan pérez de moya is completed by the same author with a moral sentence that could explain the inclusion of the episode in the series: hercules means the virtuous man who wishes to overcome the desire of his flesh, with whom he has great combat and fight on a regular basis. Greed or carnal desire is said to be a daughter of the earth, understood by antaeus, because this greed is not born of the spirit, but of the flesh, as the apostle says. An appreciation in line with what the marquis of villena had stated a century earlier: antaeus represents man's attachment to carnal vices and, therefore, contrary to god. Hercules, and those who act like him, by ending this carnal attachment, free themselves from such tyrannical and vicious servitude that robs their subjects of body and soul and reason and zeal, not consenting to the virtuous habit. More recently, this episode has been related to the virtues of philip iv as a strong and cunning ruler who would manage to destroy all his enemies, no matter how powerful they were. To create this canvas, the painter adapted the print that hans sebald beham had made with the same theme, even incorporating the stony landscape of the engraving, although converting beham's light background into a dark cavern, very similar to the backgrounds of the entire set. It is usually considered that this is one of the lowest quality paintings in the entire series, citing the participation of the extremaduran's workshop, who surely took care of the head of hercules, which maintains the same physiognomy and ironic and disbelieving tone as that of the episode in which the hero changes the course of the river alfeo (p1248). Antaeus certainly presents some problems in its conception, which in part had to be corrected in its placement in the hall of realms, about three meters from the ground. But it must be taken into account that, in the composition of this painting, zurbarán had to face a rather problematic arrangement of the figures; the theme conditioned a vertical solution of the two giants and, however, the very conception of the series - in a horizontal format with the figure of hercules in the foreground and always at the same scale - constrained antaeus to a small space, attached to the upper part of the canvas, which surely prevented zurbarán from completing the left arm and hand of the character (text extracted from ruiz, l. In: el palacio del rey planeta. Felipe iv y el buen retiro, museo prado national, 2005, p. Object Type: painting. Genre: mythological painting. Date: 1634. Dimensions: 136 × 153 cm (53.5 × 60.2 in). Medium: oil on canvas. Collection: Museo del Prado. Hércules luchando con Anteo, por Zurbarán
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