Ulysses Returns Chryseis to Her Father

For well over a century, nobody at the French court knew what this picture was about. Claude painted it around 1644 for a French collector, Roger du Plessis de Liancourt, with France's ambassador in Rome as go-between, and in 1665 it passed to Louis XIV. The royal inventory of 1683 could not name the subject, and it was still a mystery when the Louvre opened as a public museum in 1793. The answer had been written on Claude's record drawing, where it has since faded, and on a print made in 1664. The story comes from the first book of Homer's Iliad. Look for the tiny group at the top of the steps on the left, where Ulysses in armour hands Chryseis, in blue, back to her father, a priest of Apollo in white, while oxen for the sacrifice are led off a boat below.