Hercules with Omphale

Hercules with Omphale is a mythological painting dated to 1535, attributed to Lucas Cranach the Younger, with Lucas Cranach the Elder also credited as a creator. The work was executed in paint on a beech wood panel measuring 82 cm in height by 118 cm in width.

The painting is held in the collection of the Statens Museum for Kunst, where it remains located. The sources do not record a commission, prior ownership, or earlier provenance history prior to its entry into this collection, nor do they document any intermediate custodians or acquisition circumstances.

Hercules with Omphale is held by the Statens Museum for Kunst in Denmark, where it belongs to the museum's collection as recorded in its institutional catalogue.

No accession number is documented in the available sources, and no exhibition history is recorded for the painting.

Critical reception of Lucas Cranach the Younger's 1535 painting has been examined in relation to his father's workshop practices and the elder Cranach's mythological output, with scholars noting the collaborative attribution recorded in contemporary inventories. The work situates within broader Renaissance reinterpretations of the Hercules and Omphale narrative, reflecting humanist fascination with inverted power dynamics and domestic authority. Its placement in the Statens Museum for Kunst collection underscores early 19th-century Danish museum acquisition patterns for Northern Renaissance mythological paintings, linking it to wider historiography of German Renaissance art circulation in Scandinavia.

Created in 1535 by Lucas Cranach the Younger, this oil painting portrays the Greek hero Heracles in the company of the Lydian queen Omphale. Executed in the Northern Renaissance idiom, the work combines meticulous figuration with a vivid palette, set against a dark backdrop that accentuates the bright costumes of the figures. The composition is part of the collection of Denmark’s Statens Museum for Kunst.