The Funeral of Patroclus

In 1778 David was a scholarship student in Rome, three years into the stay every ambitious French painter fought for, and still smarting from failing the Prix de Rome four times before he finally won it. This is what he sent back as proof of his progress: a crowded oil study of the funeral of Patroclus from Homer's Iliad, the dead friend laid at the foot of the pyre while Achilles rages and captured Trojans are led up to be sacrificed. It is busy and theatrical, closer to the Baroque he grew up on than to the stripped-down, statue-like style he would soon make his own. Roman viewers admired it when it was shown that September. The picture then vanished for almost two centuries, surfacing again only in 1972.