* https://youtu.be/Ii-jO0ubNnw
* https://www.albertoballocca.com/ancient-grace/
* https://www.albertoballocca.com/13th-effort/

13th Effort is a mixedmedia painting on canvas exhibited in New York that recalls to the ancient Greek myth of 12 trials of Hercules.

The twelve trials (in Greek dodekathlos) of Heracles, later Hercules in Roman mythology, are a series of episodes of Greek mythology, later reunited in a single story, which concern the exploits carried out by the hero Heracles to atone for the fact of having made himself guilty of the death of his family.

According to one hypothesis, the cycle of the twelve trials was first established in a lost poem, the Eracleia, written around 600 BC. by Pisander of Rhodes. Currently the labors of Heracles are not present all together in a single text, but must be collected from different sources.

In the metopes of the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, which date back to 450 BC., approximately, there is a famous sculptural representation of it. It may have been precisely the number of these metopes, 12 in fact, that since ancient times led to fixing the traditional number of undertakings at this heroic figure.

A philosophical, moral and allegorical meaning can also be attributed to the superhuman feats of Hercules, often performed with an attitude of defiance towards death, which goes beyond the immediate one of a simple narration of heroic deeds: the figure of Heracles represents a tradition of interior mysticism and the Labors can easily be interpreted as a sort of spiritual journey. The last three Labors of Hercules, in fact, are generally interpreted as a metaphor for death.

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