Expert opinion: Dr. Hans VliegheThis

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This depicts one of the most famous episodes from the story of the mythical Greek hero Achilles. His mother, Thetis, fearing that her son would perish in the Trojan War, sent him to the island of Scyros to hide among the daughters of King Lycomedes, disguised as a girl. However, the Greeks, led by Diomedes and Ulysses, had tracked down the young hero, whose aid the Greeks desperately needed to defeat the Trojans. Once on Scyros, they managed to trick Achilles into revealing their identity through cunning.

 

 The scene depicted here goes back to a composition by Rubens. The painting discussed here is one of several copies of the final design for a carpet depicting the episode described. The depiction is part of a carpet sequence consisting of eight scenes, the presumed first edition of which was woven around 1630 in the workshop of the Brussels carpet weaver Daniel Eggermans. 

 

The copy discussed here appears to me to have been executed in the late 17th century. I am unable to identify the copyist's hand. The image, painted on copper, may originally have belonged to a cycle of eight copper plates specifically intended for the open art market. Such serially produced copies after Rubens, Van Dyck, and other well-known Flemish history painters were known to be part of the mass production of Antwerp painting workshops in the 17th century. They were sold in large numbers, primarily to Spain, where such copper paintings were very popular; from there, they were also imported into the South American colonial empire.

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