Abduction of Polyxena

Abduction of PolyxenaA black and white photograph of Pio Fedis The Abduction of Polyxena, depicting the fateful moment the youngest princess of Troy is taken by Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, after the city falls. This angle captures the extreme pathos and emotional intensity of the scene, framing Polyxena's final struggle as she casts her arm and head to the sky, and to the gods.

A print of Pollux of the Dioscuri — one of the Spartan twin brothers

The couple's fifty daughters are the Menae — the personifications of the months of the moon

working in the generation that took Haarlem from a provincial town to one of the great print centres of Europe

in the old Greek phrase

and the cap of invisibility from Hades

The episode is the eleventh labour of Hercules

Rome recast him as Mars

remains a question scholars have argued about since antiquity

whose temple stood atop the Capitoline Hill

dry island at the centre of the Cyclades that was

The composition is closely modelled on the Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) of Polykleitos

so it's not certain which of them are specifically depicted here