Briseis returned to Achilles by Nestor

The man raising his hand behind Briseis is swearing an oath. In the Iliad, Agamemnon hands back the girl he had taken from Achilles and swears he never touched her, and the Prado reads the gesture that way, though the figure has long been called Ulysses instead. Achilles comes forward to take her, old Nestor at her back seems to push her on, and behind them the body of Patroclus lies in a tent with two women mourning over it. Rubens painted this panel as the model for one of eight tapestries on the life of Achilles, the last tapestry series he designed. The two carved figures at the sides say what the scene is for, Mercury with his feathered cap and his snake-twined staff, and Concordia under a laurel crown with two clasped hands below her. An X-ray found that the cupid at the upper right first had the head he has in the small sketch, and that Rubens turned it down toward the scene.