From War Hero to Slave to Love: On the Reception of Achilles on Scyros in the Renaissance

This essay discusses the iconography of two panel paintings by Johannes Hispanus representing a few episodes from the childhood and youth of Achilles: the works are datable to the mid-1490s and appear to originate from a Florentine humanistic milieu. The essay argues that the painter and his patron conceived the paintings’ narrative by following the Achilled by Statius quite closely. In addition, they were inspired by a well-established iconographic tradition which can be reconstructed thanks to frescoes, sarcophagi and various items from the decorative arts in the time extending from the Roman Imperial age to late antiquity. The second part of the essay addresses the question of why the portrayal of Achilles’ early life was extremely rare in Italian art until the beginning of the 16th century. After presenting an overview of Achilles’ fortuna in literature, ranging from ancient Greek and Roman works to a few vernacular ones, the argument is made that Dante’s Divine Comedy, where the hero was placed in Hell, among its lecherous inhabitants, must have contributed enormously to the reception of Achilles as a despicable “slave to love.” In fact, his reputation as a “war hero” was restored not until the High Renaissance thanks to the rediscovery of the Homeric poems.