(Bissone 1623–1685)
Odysseus recognises Achilles amongst the daughters of Lykomedes,
oil on canvas, 135.5 x 181 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Austria, until 1997;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for suggesting the attribution to the Ticinese painter Carpoforo Tencalla after examination of the present painting in the original and for his help in cataloguing. He dates this work to circa 1660.

This painting can be compared to works made by the artist in Southern Bavaria, Slovakia, and in Moravia, as well as in Austria, and in particular in Vienna: Tencalla frescoed the Leopoldine wing of the Hofburg, the Am Hof church, and the abbey at Heiligenkreuz. His first decorations of 1667 are regrettably entirely lost, however those in the sacristy of the abbey church of Heiligenkreuz and the am Hof church completed in the two years following, are still conserved. He is documented at work in the Abensperg-Traun castle at Petronell between 1666 and 1678 and the monochrome figure of Abbundance in the ball-room can be compared to the present work with the same bright lineaments of light. The spirited air of the figures, such as Ulysses, is also easily identifiable in the signed frescoes of the choir of the abbey church at Lambach, near Linz, executed in 1659 or in the Allegory of Winter for the ceiling of the hall in Trauttmansdorff castle at Trautenfels, of 1670.

The episode depicted in the present painting is the story of Achilles recounted by Statius (Achilleis: 1:207), Philostratus, Apollodorus (Biblioteca III, 13:8) and Ovid (Metamorphosis XIII: 162-170), amongst others. By deploying the stratagem of leaving weapons among the feminine accoutrements of the daughters of Lycomedes, king of Siros, Ulysses was able to discover Achilles dressed as a woman, hidden there by his mother Thetis, so as to avoid his involvement in the war with Troy, where according to his fate, he was destined to die. Indeed, at the centre of the composition we find a maiden who appears to abandon her traditional weapons of seduction – jewels, pearls, unguents, brushes and ribbons – to pick up a bow and arrow. However, she is more muscular and well built than the maidens that surround her, and this in its self would be enough to betray her. According to Pliny (Naturalis Historia, XXXV: 134) the most celebrated depiction of this episode in ancient times was that brilliantly made by Athenion of Maroneia during the final decades of the 4th century B.C.

Tencalla interprets the scene with a certain baroque encyclopaedism. The reason that caused Achilles to take up arms was a sound of battle artfully created by Ulysses’ companions encamped nearby, and it is this that explains the tempestuous motion with which the hero moves to arm himself, as Ulysses tries to still him. Moreover, his commitment to engage in battle is also foretold by the presence of the horse on the left, certainly not the kind of creature usually introduced into harem-like women’s quarters. Ulysses is dressed in oriental style, in the Polish manner, and he wears an eye-catching turban, as does his unnamed companion. Perhaps the myth is transposed to describe what was then thought to be a real danger of the age, the expansion of the Turkish empire. The women’s chambers seemingly extend into an enormous palace, from which on a distant loggia, we can see various people watching the scene unfold.