Les Ambassadeurs d'Agamemnon dans la tente d'Achille

Ingres painted this in 1801, at 21, to win the Prix de Rome, the state competition whose prize was years of study in Italy. The set subject that year came from Homer's Iliad, the embassy Agamemnon sends to persuade the sulking Achilles back into the Trojan War. Ingres, trained in the studio of Jacques-Louis David, treats it as a scene of held tension rather than action. Achilles has half risen with a lyre still in his hand, the ambassadors stand and plead, and nothing yet has been decided. He built it as a showcase of the nude and clothed figure done the correct classical way, borrowing the red-cloaked Odysseus from an antique sculpture. It won him the prize, though the wars delayed his departure, so the young painter had to wait some years before he actually reached Rome.