Hercules appears in the center of the composition in a moment of great effort; the legs open and slightly bent, the trunk bent forward, the head bent down and the arms resting on two metal handles that, nailed to two enormous boulders, help the character move those rocks. Between them, a small portion of sea opens up, located here right in the center of the composition. This scene shows one of the last works of the son of jupiter, although its specific identification has changed over time, and its symbology as an emblem is one of the most complex in the series. In the testamentary of charles ii the theme is mistakenly recorded as hercules holding the celestial vault - when hercules was atlantean of the world - and tormo, in 1911, identified the episode as that of the separation of calpe and abyla, a practically non-existent theme for the authors of the classical world, as lópez torrijos pointed out. This scholar rejects tormo's interpretation because she considers that only seneca made reference to the episode, without having any impact on spanish authors, who were more attentive to recounting the placement of the two famous columns, with the episode non plus ultra, which charles v would later change, thanks to his overseas territories, to plus ultra. López torrijos remembers that, according to texts such as the general history of spain by father mariana, the columns were actually two rocks that served to narrow the passage of water between the atlantic and the mediterranean. Delving into this idea, lópez torrijos points out the attitude of hercules in this canvas, pulling the handles towards himself, reflecting the attitude of bringing the two rocks closer together; an observation that seems convincing, and that would reinforce the vision of the spanish monarch as a unifier and not a separator of lands and kingdoms. It is worth remembering, however, that baltasar de victoria, a decade before this series was made, expressly cited the episode of the separation of the mountains. In any case, both in mariana's narrative and in vitoria's, reference is made to hercules' relationship with spain and the creation of the austrian currency, which would more than justify the inclusion of the episode in the cycle and its markedly hispanic specificity. The composition of this canvas maintains the formulation of the entire ensemble, centered on the hard-working action of the hero, conceived with a difficult foreshortening for which at the moment no previous visual reference has been found and which, as happens with the rest of the works that make up the series, was designed to be seen from below. The pictorial solutions provided by the extremadura native to resolve the different areas of the work are especially interesting. The painter sketches the rocks and the seabed in a very summary manner, and animates the latter with small, punctual, more pastel brushstrokes. On the body of hercules, he applies color in different densities that serve to give anatomical coherence to this complicated foreshortening (text extracted from ruiz, l. In: el palacio del rey planeta. Felipe iv y el buen retiro, museo nacional del prado, 2005, p. 157). Object Type: painting. Genre: mythological painting. Date: 1634. Dimensions: 136 × 167 cm (53.5 × 65.7 in). Medium: oil on canvas. Collection: Museo del Prado. Hércules separa los montes Calpe y Abyla, por Zurbarán
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