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Achille Devéria
French Neoclassic mythological figurative drawing early 18th century
1826

About the Item

The iconography and the inscription at the centre help us recognising the episode in the one of Heracles and the Cercopes, that worth him the appellation of μελάμπυγος (melampygos meaning dark bottom). According to the legend, attributed to the mythological blind poet Homer, the Cercopes were two proverbial thieves and liars-sons of the deity Theia and Ocean-to whom the mother predicted to pay attention to a certain Melampygos. One time they met Heracles asleep and they tried to steal from him, but he woke up at tied them both by their feet at the club, with their faces pointing downwards, to bring them to the queen Omphale, during the time he was her slave. During the walk, the Nemean lion’s skin fell off, so the two Cercopes saw at the dark bottom of the Hero, realizing he was the melampygos of the prophecy, and started laughing. Heracles asked them the reason of their hilarity and, amused himself, decided to free them and let them go. According to Ovid’s Metamorphosis, the Cercopes were later transformed into monkeys by Zeus after that they tried to cheat on him, too, and were deported to island of Pitecusa (in Greek, monkey). The moment is exactly the one of the discovery, as we can see by the gesture of Heracles-portrayed while his moving-and by the two thieves-here as babies differently form the regular iconography, of which the most ancient exemplar belongs to the 6th B. C. in Selinunte’s temple-pointing their gaze to the muscular buttocks in plain view. The Greek inscription in capital letters says ΗΡΑΧΛΗΣ ΜΕΛΑΝΠΥΓ (Eracles Melanpug), showing a little inexperience: Σ (sigma) is inverted,Ἡρακλῆς (Erakles) should be written with a Κ (kappa) not a Χ (chi), before the Π (pi) there should be a Μ (mi) not a Ν (ni). The drawing is dated to the juvenile phase of Achille Devéria, in a time when his brother and him were already well known artists since they started attending the Salon (from 1822), where he was already on of the writer Victor Hugo’s closest friend (they met in a theatre in 1824) but before he started collaborating with the lithography of Charles Motte, of whom he married the daughter in 1829. It could have been the studio for a bigger project, as a decorative cycle, as it seems for the oval shape and because decoration seems continuing over the edges (at the button, on the left, we can see a female figure dress up “all’antica” supposely a goddess or an allegory, while on the right there are three more letters and probably a character overlooking by a window).

Creator:

Achille Devéria (1800 - 1857, French)

Creation Year:

1826

Dimensions:

Height: 10.87 in (27.6 cm)Width: 8.98 in (22.8 cm)

Medium:

Paper,Pencil

Movement & Style:

Romantic

Period:

1820-1829