Greci e Troiani in lotta per il corpo di Patroclo

Wiertz finished this enormous canvas in 1836, in Rome, where the young Belgian painter had gone to measure himself against the old masters, Rubens above all, whose crowded, muscular battle scenes he wanted to rival. It stands nearly 4 meters tall and 7 wide. The subject comes from book 17 of Homer's Iliad. After Patroclus is killed wearing the armor of Achilles, Greeks and Trojans grapple over his body in a tangle of straining limbs. Wiertz meant it to announce him as a great history painter, and it did draw notice when it was shown in Antwerp in 1837. He thought so well of it that in 1844 he painted the whole thing over again, even larger. This first version stayed in his home city of Liege.