Hercules Preventing the Centaurs from the Rape of Hippodameia, from The Labors of Hercules

Although nothing is known of Aldegrever’s training, his work shows the influence of contemporary Italian, Netherlandish, and German artistic productions. His engravings, which number nearly three hundred, resemble the fine and detailed manner of the Nuremberg Little Masters; many of his prints quote those of Dürer, Georg Pencz, Barthel and Sebald Beham, and Jacob Binck. Aldegrever’s series the Labors of Hercules, of which these two works are part, is based on an anonymous Venetian set of woodcuts that also inspired a group of drawings by Dürer in 1511. Aldegrever illustrates two of the Labors, described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which demonstrate the uncontrollable lust and violent nature of centaurs. One of the scenes shows Hercules’s triumph over the centaur Nessus. Captivated by the beauty of Hercules’s wife, Deianira, Nessus tried to kidnap her, but Hercules shot the centaur with a poisoned arrow. The dying centaur gave Deianira his blood-soaked tunic, saying that anyone it touched would love no one but her. However, when the jealous Deianira later stained Hercules’s cloak with the blood, it proved poisonous and killed him.