Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Achilles.
The gallery
Thetis Dipping the Infant Achilles into the River Styx
Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1625
Painted around 1625 as part of Rubens's series of designs for a tapestry cycle on the life of Achilles, this dynamic oil sketch shows the sea-goddess Thetis gripping her newborn son by the heel and plunging him into the dark waters of the Styx to render him invulnerable. The three-headed hound Cerberus and the ferryman Charon's bark anchor the scene in the underworld, while the swirling Baroque composition foreshadows the hero's single mortal weakness — the heel by which his mother held him.
Achilles Tending the Wounded Patroclus
Unknown (the Sosias Painter), c. 500 BCE
The interior tondo of an Attic red-figure kylix, now in the Antikensammlung Berlin (F 2278), depicts Achilles carefully bandaging the wounded arm of his companion Patroclus. Patroclus turns his face away in pain while Achilles, bareheaded and intent, binds the dressing — a rare moment of tenderness amid the violence of the Trojan War. The vase is one of the masterpieces of late Archaic Athenian pottery and a touchstone for ancient images of the bond between the two warriors.
The Wrath of Achilles
Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1630–1635
Another scene from Rubens's Achilles tapestry series, this work dramatizes the opening crisis of Homer's Iliad: enraged by Agamemnon's seizure of his prize Briseis, Achilles begins to draw his sword, only to be checked by the goddess Athena, who seizes him by the hair from behind. The taut diagonal of the composition captures the instant of restrained fury that sets the entire epic in motion, sending Achilles into the sulking withdrawal that costs the Greeks dearly.
The Wrath of Achilles
François-Léon Benouville, 1847
This Neoclassical canvas by the French painter François-Léon Benouville, awarded a prize at the École des Beaux-Arts, isolates Achilles in a moment of brooding rage as he sits apart from the Greek camp. Idealized in the academic tradition, the hero clutches his weapons and stares fixedly ahead, embodying the menis — the divine wrath — that is the very first word of the Iliad. The restrained palette and sculptural figure exemplify mid-nineteenth-century French history painting's fascination with Homeric subjects.