Philoctetes

According to Greek mythology, the great warrior Philoctetes was bitten by a serpent and abandoned on the desert island of Lemnos on his way to Troy. After ten years of war, Ulysses and Neoptolemus sailed back for him and his bow (given to him, with poisoned arrows, by the hero Heracles), to fullfill the prophecy that would end the Trojan War. Prud’hon's academic nude of Philoctetes reveals his interest in the characters, ideals and aesthetics of ancient Greece, as was typical in the context of revolutionary France. The hero’s hairstyle and sideburns would not have looked out of place among men of the painter’s generation.