This illustration, by the French artist Pierre Paul Prud’hon (c. 1758–1823), was initially intended for a collection of plays by Jean Racine (c. 1639-1699). The commission, however, fell through and Pierre Paul Prud’hon repurposed the design for an original painting of his own. The illustration (and later painting) features the characters, Andromache and Astyanax, from ancient Greek myth and legend. Andromache was the wife of the Trojan hero, Hector, and Astyanax was their child. Homer described their family in his Iliad, stating, “Andromache came to meet…[Hector], and her waiting-woman carried the little boy in her arms, their baby son and Hector’s darling, lovely as a star, whom Hector called Scamandrius, but everyone else Astyanax, ‘Town-lord’, because his father was the one defence of Ilium” (The Iliad, Book 6, approximately line 400).
Prud’hon’s illustration likely envisions a scene after the death of Hector at the hands of Achilles, and after the successful capture of Troy due to Odysseus’ horse scheme. In the chaos and mayhem of the fall of Troy, Andromache and Astyanax had the misfortune of becoming the prisoners of Achilles’ violent son, Neoptolemus (sometimes called Pyrrhus)—often identified as the killer of King Priam of Troy and one of those responsible for the sacrifice of Priam’s daughter, Polyxena, after the war. Andromache’s son, Astyanax, too, became one of the victims of the Greeks, and his murderer was often identified as either Neoptolemus or Odysseus by the ancients. It is this sad story that inspired Pierre Paul Prud’hon’s illustration and painting.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Sources:
- The Iliad by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited/introduced by Peter Jones. New York: Penguin Classics, 2014.
- The Odyssey by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by D. C. H. Rieu. New York: Penguin Classics, 2009.
- The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Vintage Classics, 1961, 1963, 1989, 1990.
- The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion, edited by Simon Price and Emily Kearns. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
- https://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/troj_women.html
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Astyanax-Greek-mythology
- https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/338167
