Discovery of Achilles on Skyros

Poussin was living in Rome when he painted this, about 1649, working almost entirely for collectors in Paris, a city then in the middle of the Fronde, the revolt of the princes and the parlement against the government of the child king Louis XIV. He shipped the pictures north and argued with his patrons by letter. The story is one of concealment. Achilles' mother, knowing he would die at Troy, hid him dressed as a girl among the daughters of King Lycomedes on Skyros. Ulysses and Diomedes arrived as merchants with a chest of jewellery and cloth, slipped a sword in among it, and the boy gave himself away by reaching for it. Poussin gives the instant of the grab, every figure locked into a pose you can read at once. He took the subject up again about six years later, and that version is in Richmond, Virginia.