Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates (371BCE) tells that when Hercules was approaching manhood, he was given a choice of a life of pleasure or a life of Virtue. While sitting at a crossroads and considering his future, he is approached by two immortal women, Virtue, in...
Bruegel the Elder’s The Land of Cockaigne, aka Het Luilekkerland, makes you think it’s a picnic. Not. It’s a satirical look at Cockaigne, a mythical place where it’s always spring and never winter, in which life is all play and no work,...
Hercules Protecting the Balance Between Pleasure and Virtue is Ligare’s allusion to Dürer’s Hercules at the Crossroads (1498c.). What Dürer implies, Ligare makes emphatic. His essential change is the picnic. He shows no food; instead, Ligare places Pleasure on a blue...
