Zenobia found by Shepherds on the banks of the Araxes

This was Bouguereau's ticket to Rome. In 1850 he entered it for the Prix de Rome, the competition every French art student dreamed of winning, and it took the top prize, shared that year with the painter Paul Baudry. The story comes from the Roman historian Tacitus. Zenobia, wife of an Armenian king, was stabbed by her own husband as he fled a losing war, then thrown into the river Araxes so she could not be captured. She survived, and shepherds found her lying on the bank. Bouguereau paints the moment they lift her, pale and half-conscious, out of the reeds. The prize sent him to the Villa Medici in Rome, where he spent his days studying the Renaissance masters who would shape almost everything he painted afterwards.