Landscape with Polydamas Killing the Lion on Mount Olympus (Morning)

Polydamas was a real athlete, a huge man from Thessaly who won the pankration, the ancient no-holds-barred fighting contest, at Olympia in 408 BC. More than 500 years later the travel writer Pausanias saw his statue there and wrote down the legends about him, among them that he killed a lion on Mount Olympus without a weapon.

Tierce stages the fight in the lower right corner. The hero locks his arms round the beast's head, a second lion lies dead at his feet, and in front of him a soldier slides from a fallen white horse. The museum links the scene with lions attacking the army of the Persian king Xerxes, hence the helmets, spears and riders in the gorge. Above them a great twisted tree climbs almost the full height of the canvas against a faintly rosy dawn. The carved marble base of that statue is still kept at Olympia.