Returning after a period of several years in Italy where he became familiar with Caravaggesque painting in Rome, the Munich court painter Ulrich Loth was commissioned by Maximilian I to create a third painting in landscape format for the Old Palace in Schleißheim to complement a pair of works by Alessandro Turchi, completed earlier around 1620. Loth added a further scene from the life of the hero to the counterpieces—‘The Fury of Hercules’ and ‘Hercules and Omphale’—that recounts Hercules’s worldy end from wearing a poisoned tunic.