Reassessing the Pope’s Tapestries. The Significance of Hercules for Leo X

The Labors of Hercules, one of the most popular literary and artistic themes of the Renaissance, was a particularly prolific motif for tapestries. This paper will examine the significance of the figure of Hercules for the pope Leo X (pont. 1513-1521), through his Flemish tapestries. Hercules appears especially in the borders of the famous "Acts of the Apostles", and in the "Grotesques" series (or "Triumphs of the Gods"). These series were intended to function as an exemplum virtutis, a sophisticated celebration of Leo’s Christian virtues in terms of classical models. We’ll see that Hercules was included because of parallels drawn by contemporary commentators between the mythic hero and Leo X (indeed he was taken as a prototype for the pope in the commentaries and panegyric texts published during his pontificate), and also because the Labors of Hercules were variously interpreted in the Renaissance as symbolizing devotion to religion.