Landscape with Milo of Croton Devoured by a Lion (Dusk)

Milo of Croton was the most famous wrestler of the Greek world, six times champion at Olympia. The story of his death is about a strong man trusting his strength too far. In old age he found a tree trunk half split with wedges and tried to tear it open with his bare hands. The wood snapped shut on his fingers and held him for the beasts.

Tierce puts him in the bottom left corner, small, bent over the stump, with the lion already on his back. The rest of the tall canvas belongs to the evening. Two riders gallop along a road, women raise their arms at an altar, and far off a coast with ships fades under a pink and gold sky. The French sculptor Pierre Puget had also given Milo a lion, in the marble set up at Versailles in 1683.