Assicurazioni Generali S.p.A. - La morte di Priamo (Death of Priam)

Created as part of a contrasting set with the bas relief La danza dei figli di Alcinoo [“Dance of the sons of Alcinous”], one depicting pain and the other joy, this bas relief is a representation of the episode described by Virgil in Canto II of the Aeneid. Achilles' son Pyrrhus in the centre, seizing the old king of Troy by the hair and preparing to kill him despite the efforts of two women to restrain him. On the left we see the aged Hecuba in a faint, supported by a handmaid, and on the right Priam's daughter Cassandra, her arms raised imploringly skywards, and Hector's widow Andromache, hiding her little son Astyanax in her arms to protect him. The presence in the foreground of the naked body of another of Priam's sons, the young Polites, foretells the story’s ending. Canova created the works using motherforms, moulds whose internal contours determine the external form of the plaster casts that emerge from them.