Achilles Receiving in his Tent the Envoys of Agamemnon

Ingres took the Rome Prize in 1801 with this subject, and the museum holds the small oil sketch in which he worked the composition out. The episode is from the Iliad: Odysseus leads the embassy that Agamemnon has sent to the tent of the still-resentful Achilles, and the museum notes that Ingres built his figures on famous antique sculptures — the habits of the studio were already archaeological, and the classical quotation was meant to be seen. Ingres was the most convinced Neoclassicist of his generation, and the substance of his style was exactly this: pure contour, cool colour, and forms taken from antique sculpture and from Raphael. For a young painter the prize picture was the acknowledged gate into a Roman education, and the sketch shows the design being assembled rather than the finished performance. It was afterwards in the possession of Edgar Degas, whose admiration for Ingres was lifelong. The panel is held in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.