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Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 76: 

Technical notes: The support consists of a single
piece of dense, intricately-woven twill canvas with a vertical
zig-zag “herringbone” weave and woven pattern of
dark blue (indigo?) “ticking” stripes; there are selvedges
at the left and right edges. The original stripwidth
of the fabric was just over 74.0 cm. Tacking edges
(ungrounded) are preserved on all sides; at the top and
bottom a c. 0.5–0.7 cm wide strip of the original paint
surface has been folded over the stretcher. Faint cusping
is visible on the left edge.

The preparatory layers consist of a thin, beige ground
that leaves the canvas texture partially visible. The painting
underwent conservation treatment in 1841, 1861,
1926, 1982 and 2010.

Provenance: Gustav III (as Crown Prince) 1761 (as
Bertholet Flémalle); Gustav III 1792, no. 43 (as Bertholet
Flémalle); KM 1795, no. 64; KM 1816, no. 750.

Exhibited: Stockholm 2010, no. 60.

Bibliography: NM Cat. 1867, p. 29 (as Bertholet Flémalle);
Sander II, p. 105; Göthe 1887, p. 85 (as Bertholet
Flémalle); Göthe 1893, pp. 105–106; Göthe 1910, p. 119;
Granberg 1929–1931, III, p. 18; NM Cat. 1958, p. 72;
NM Cat. 1990, p. 132.

This dramatic night scene depicts the legendary
Greek hero Achilles treacherously brought down
while praying in the temple of Apollo by Paris, son of
the Trojan king Priam. Apollo, the Sun God and protector
of poetry and music, appears twice in the scene:
as an imaginary antique statue atop the altar on the
right, carrying bow and quiver as well as cithara, and
in the “flesh”, descending in a blaze of light, as the
vengeful god who comes to the aid of Paris by aiming
his arrow in the direction of the kneeling Achilles’ vulnerable
heel. The artist represents the moment just
before Paris, who approaches his victim from the rear,
shoots the arrow that will penetrate Achilles’ foot and
kill him. In contrast to the majority of the gods who
favoured the Greeks, Apollo had stood on the side of
the Trojans all through the war and now finally dealt a
mortal blow to the Greek hero, thus avenging the
death of his son Tenes, who had been killed by Achilles
at Tenedos. The figure on the left, who draws his
sword in a futile attempt to defend his companion, is
probably Nestor’s son Antilochus (see below). The
all’antica “stone” relief prominently placed in the foreground
at the lower right possibly calls to mind
Achilles’ ancestry through its depiction of the story of
Deucalion, often called the Greek Noah, and his wife
Pyrrha.1

The present subject, drawn from the authoritative
texts of classical antiquity, is one infrequently represented
in 17th-century Flemish art.2 Homer did not
narrate Achilles’ death, but the Greek hero’s violent
end at the hands of Paris was twice predicted in the
Illiad, first by Achilles’ horse Xanthos (Illiad, XIX,
416–417) and later by the dying Hector, whose last
words warned the victorious Achilles to be careful, for
he, Hector, might become the gods’ curse upon him
“on that day when Paris and Phoebus Apollo destroy
you in the Scaean gates…” (Illiad, XXII, 358–360).
According to later writers, who provided the narrative
details that Homer had omitted, Achilles was murdered
in the temple of Apollo Thymbraeus, near the
Trojan walls, where he had gone unarmed either to
marry the Trojan princess Polyxena, daughter of the
Trojan king Priam and Hecuba, who instigated the
murder to avenge the death of their sons Hector and
Troilus at the hands of Achilles, or to conclude peace
with Polyxena’s father, king Priam. The legend that
Achilles was killed by Paris, aided by Apollo, in the
temple of Apollo, where he had been lured under the
pretext that he was going to marry Polyxena, with
whom he had fallen in love, was repeated frequently
since, in the 4th century, Servius Grammaticus had
told the story in his commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid:
“… [Achilles] had made arrangements to accept his
beloved Polyxena as bride in the temple; and he was
killed treacherously by Paris, who was hiding behind
an image. It is therefore thought that Paris directed his
arrows while Apollo held him and he directed them
well, straight at the only vulnerable spot”.3 Flémalle
could have known Servius’ version of the legend, that
of Boccaccio, or one of the later mythological dictionaries,
such as Natale Conti’s Mythologiae (1627).4
While the idea that Achilles was a victim of his passions
is implicit in the story and the Renaissance
mythographers usually ended their accounts with the
moral that the hero fell victim to “lustful love”, Flémalle
does not include any specific allusion to
Achilles’ love for Polyxena in his depiction. On the
contrary, he interprets the scene in classical terms by
emphasizing the effect of the gods on man: the focus is
on the inevitability of the hero’s fate and the impact of
Apollo, the god who favoured Troy, a force that caused
strength to be overpowered by treachery and ruse.
The altar of Apollo is decorated with a date palm
motif – a symbol of military victory as well as the
Christian martyr’s victory over death – and a quiver (of
Apollo?), an emblem possibly signifying that “to seek
to know the ways of the gods is foolhardiness”.5 Flémalle’s
interpretation may have been inspired by the
pseudo-historical account of the Trojan War in Dares’
De excidio Troiae historia.6 Dares is one of the few
authors to maintain that treachery and not love caused
Achilles’ death, and he also states that he was accompanied
to the temple by Antilochus, the son of Nestor.
There are no signed or dated works by Flémalle and
a chronology of his oeuvre is thus difficult to establish.
Strongly influenced by Franco-Roman classicism, this
painting should probably be dated around 1650, in the
period immediately following the artist’s return to his
native Liège after years spent abroad in Italy and
France. Characteristic elements are the Classical architecture
that defines the interior space of the temple,
the violent movement that animates the principal fig-
ures, underlined by the agitated draperies, anticipating
another work dating from the same period, the spatially
more complex Heliodorus Driven from the Temple in
Brussels (Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts).7 Immediately
striking in both works is the great importance given
to the architectural setting in which the artist situates
the scenes: the monumental temple interior with rows
of stately Doric columns and the almost exaggerated
perspective of the pavement with its clear vanishing
lines. Also recognizable is the typically short stature of
Flémalle’s figures, their accentuated expressions and
theatrical gestures, the armour and draperies all’antica,
the latter with tight folds that, rather than defining the
figures’ underlying anatomy, underline gestures and
movements. Flémalle carefully associates metallic or
silvery tones with areas of strong colour, such as vermilion,
creating a rarefied colour scheme.
CF

1 According to Ovid, Met., I, pp. 318ff.).
2 See Pigler II, 283. Interestingly, a painting of the same subject by Gérard
de Lairesse (present whereabouts unknown) was listed by G. Hoet and P.
Terwesten, for which see their Catalogus of naamlijst van schilderijen…, II 
The Hague, 1752, p. 289 no. 4; and Roy 1992, p. 491 no. M.101 (sale, The
Hague, Coll. Adelyke Huys de Voorst, Countess of Albemarle, 26 October
1744). Cf. Rubens’ Achilles series, which includes the scene of the Death of
Achilles, for which see Haverkamp-Begemann 1975, 134–141, figs. 74–82;
and Rotterdam/Madrid 2003.
3 Servius Grammaticus, P. Virgilii Maronis Opera, cum Servii … Commentariis
…, Venice, 1542, ad Aeneid, VI, 57 ff., cited after Haverkamp-Begemann
1975, p. 136.
4 For a discussion of the literary sources used by Rubens for his depiction
of the legend, see Haverkamp-Begemann 1975, pp. 20–37, 134–38; Held
1980, p. 183; King 1987, pp. 140–143, 184–214; and Healy in Rotterdam/
Madrid 2003, p. 46. Among the authoritative texts discussed, which
differ only in details, are: Boccaccio’s De Genealogia Deorum (ed. Micyllus,
Basle, p.308), and Natale Conti’s, Mythologie ou explication des fables…
(Paris 1627, p. 1013). For Catullus (Carmina, 64, pp. 362–370), Ovid
(Metamorphoses 13, pp. 441–448), Seneca (Trojan Women) and others,
Achilles was not in love with Polyxena and she was later sacrificed on his
tomb. For Dares (De excidio Troiae historia) and Dictys (Ephemeris belli
Troiani) love caused Achilles’ downfall; a view maintained by most
medieval writers.
5 Cf. the emblem of a date palm, titled “Divina scrutari, temerarium/Ad
Corneium Musium Delphum”, in the emblem-book of Hadrianus Junius,
an edition of which was published at Antwerp by Christopher Plantin in
1585, accompanied by the following inscription: “Immatura sitim Pharia,
arcet Palma, eadem/Sensus praepedit, et linguam matura ligat./Scrutans
celsa Dei mysteria, lingua, animo/Haeret; at ille sapit qui vestibulum
haud superat”.
6 For an Engl. trans., see The Trojan War. The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and
Dares the Phrygian. Trans. R. M. Frazer (Indiana Univ. Press) 1966.
7 Oil on canvas, 146 x 174 cm, Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts, inv.
no. 1299, for which see Brussels 1965, cat. no. 82, illus.[End]

Foto: Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum 2006

Akilles såras i hälen