Achilles And The Daughters Of Lycomedes

Painting oil on canvas measuring 173 x 273 cm without frame and 176 x 276 cm with a small frame on the support depicting Achilles and the Daughters of Lycomedes by the painter Paolo Gerolamo Piola ( Genoa 1666 - 1724 ).

Various ancient sources, including Ovid's popular Metamorphoses, narrate the episode of Achilles depicted in the Baroque period, which sees him in an act that is anything but heroic dressed in women's clothes.

Thetis, knowing that he would die if he went to fight at Troy, made him wear women's clothes and entrusted him to King Lycomedes. With the latter's daughters Achilles also entertained himself when Odysseus and Menelaus arrived, sent to Scyrus by Agamemnon to seek him out.

They brought typically feminine gifts, but also a sword and a shield, which Achilles instinctively held when the trumpets sounded, revealing his identity.

The playful scene lends itself well to the theatricality of the Genoese Baroque; thus Paolo Gerolamo Piola took advantage of this to crowd the moulded canvas narrating this story with no less than nine figures.

Looking at the painting, we cannot help but fall in love with the figure of Achilles, with a bright red feather in his hair, wrapped in a luminous blue cloak. This figure is very close to one of Paolo Gerolamo Piola's most iconic figures, the marvellous Salome formerly Canesso and now Baratti.

This amazing and unpublished painting was exhibited in Genoa at the exhibition Barocco Nascosto held between March and July 2022, and published in a corresponding catalogue.

The paintings and works of art published here are my exclusive property and therefore are always available to be viewed, by appointment, in my exhibition sites located in Sanremo and Brescia.

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Mr. Riccardo Moneghini
Art Historian