Landscape with Paris and Oenone ('The Ford')

In October 1647 Claude copied a passage from a French book onto the back of a preparatory drawing for this picture. Its author, François du Souhait, had been a secretary to a Duke of Lorraine, Claude's home country, and his free retelling of the Trojan story was published in 1614. In it the prince Paris carves a vow into a poplar by a river: when he can live without loving the nymph Oenone, the Xanthus will flow back to its source. Here the pair sit under the trees at the lower right, Oenone pointing him to his own words, before he leaves her for Helen. The canvas, finished in 1648, is the companion to the harbour scene of Ulysses returning Chryseis, made for the same French collector. The herd wading across gave it another name, The Ford, and a restorer in 1964 found the herd and water so worn that little original paint remained.