The Shepherds at the Tomb of Amyntas

Guérin signed this canvas at the lower right, P. Guérin à Naples, 1805. Naples was then the capital of a separate kingdom, nervously neutral between France and Britain, and France's ambassador there was Charles Alquier, the man who would later own this picture. Before the year was out the king opened his ports to the Russians and the British, and Alquier left the city.

The subject comes from the New Idylls of Salomon Gessner, a Swiss poet whose pastorals, modelled on Virgil and Theocritus, were read all over Europe in French translation. Two young shepherds sit on a rock in the shade, a dog asleep at their feet. Across a little stream a girl in white stands beside a large stone with a vase on it, the tomb of Amyntas, and stretches out her arm towards them. The Louvre compares the picture with Poussin's Arcadian Shepherds, where herdsmen also come upon a grave in an idyllic countryside.

Guérin showed it at the Salon of 1808. It was sold in Paris after Alquier's death, in 1825, and in 1972 the Louvre used its right of pre-emption to buy it at auction at the Hôtel Drouot.