Henri IV as Hercules Slaying the Lernaean Hydra

This painting, executed around 1600 in the circle of the painter **Toussaint Dubreuil**, depicts **Henri IV** in the guise of **Hercules slaying the Lernaean Hydra** — an explicit allegory designating, according to the work's own title, the defeated **Catholic League**. Painted just as the king had secured, with the Edict of Nantes and the Peace of Vervins, the definitive resolution of the religious and political crisis that had bled the kingdom for more than three decades, this mythological composition translates into classical language Henri IV's victory over the many-headed hydra of civil war. Now held at the Louvre, this work contemporary with the reign illustrates how the king's artistic circle mobilised ancient iconography to legitimise and celebrate, in the very first years of peace, the outcome of the reconquest of the kingdom.