Nicolas REGNIER
Flemish (active in Italy) 1591-1667
Hero and Leander
c.1626
oil on canvas
155.3 x 209.5 cm
Felton Bequest 1955
3262-4

Regnier's style changed quite dramatically during his career. He once painted in the manner of Neapolitan artists such as Caravaggio and Ribera, who used sombre colours and manipulated the sources of light in their paintings for dramatic effect. His art developed as he employed brighter colour schemes and contrasts associated more with sixteenth and seventeenth-century Bolognese masters.

The combination of colours in Hero's costume - striking burnt orange, the particular shade of pink, the blue of the belt, and beige - are typically Bolognese. The figures and facial types are also reminiscent of the work of the Bolognese master Guido Reni.

The subject of this painting is drawn from a fable of late antiquity. Hero was a priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos. Each night Leander would swim across the Hellespont to see her. One night a storm extinguished the light by which Hero guided Leander through the water to her and he drowned. Regnier depicts her dramatic lamentation over the limp, lifeless body of Leander. .