A pen and ink drawing of Hercules killing the Hydra (Metamorphoses, IX, 192). Inscribed along the top (not in the artist's hand) 'Le Virtu di Hercule favola 66', and numbered '26' in the top right hand corner. The whole is framed by black chalk lines. The drawing is mounted in a George III wash line border.

This is one of forty drawings illustrating Ovid's Metamorphoses by La Fage in the Royal Collection. Anthony Blunt has suggested that these were made while the artist was in Rome in 1679-80 and were perhaps made for a planned Italian translation of the Metamorphoses which was never published. The edition on which La Fage based his drawings is unidentified, but Blunt has pointed to the French translations of Renouard (1617) and Du Ryer (1667) as possible sources.

The drawings were probably acquired by George III and were certainly in the Royal Collection by the early nineteenth century, when they were listed in an inventory of the drawings at Buckingham House ('Inventory A').