The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles [SEP] creator
The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles
The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles is an 1801 painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, produced for the Prix de Rome competition. It is now in the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris.
It shows an episode from Homer's "Iliad", in which Achilles refuses to listen to the envoys sent by Agamemnon to convince him back into the Trojan War. The topic assigned for the artists competing for the Prix de Rome in
to four years of residence at the Académie de France in Rome. He came in second in his first attempt, but in 1801 he took the top prize with "The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles". The figures of the envoys, in the right of the painting, are muscular and solid as statues, in the style taught by David, but the two main figures on the left, Achilles and Patroclus, are mobile, vivid and graceful, like figures in a delicate bas-relief.