HectorDeath1.0025

Jacques-Louis David, 1748-1825, "La Doleur et les Regrets d'Andromaque sur le corps d'Hector son mari", 1783, oil on canvas, Paris, Louvre D.L. 1969-1 (Denon, 1e étage, salle 75; on loan from the École Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in/since 1969).

David has chosen a moment not described in Homer per se, the grief of Andromache over the ransomed body of her husband, the embodiment of Troy's future. The mythological tradition tells the bleak disposition of Andromache and her son Astyanax in the days to come: he will be murdered dramatically, thrown from the lofty walls of Troy so as to assure no resurgence of Troy's future, and she will be dealt as a common war prize to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles who slew her husband and the brute who murdered her father-in-law in the most impious way. The last living moment these two enjoyed together was narrated by Homer in Iliad 6, the poignant separation of Hector and Andromache.