Jupiter and Thetis

On a throne set upon clouds, Jupiter sits majestically, a scepter in his hand. Before him kneels Thetis, in a blue-green skirt and bare to the waist, one hand raised to touch Jupiter's beard. At the right Jupiter's eagle waits, and from among the clouds at the upper left his wife Juno peers out.

Thetis is the mother of Achilles, the hero on the Greek side in the Trojan War. According to the Iliad, when Achilles quarreled with the commander Agamemnon, he sent his mother to Jupiter to make a plea. Thetis begged that her son, fighting on earth, be granted victory.

The work in the Granet Museum (327 x 260 cm) is known as the last ambitious work the young Ingres sent to Paris from the French Academy in Rome. This one is small, at 82.0 x 65.0 cm, and opinion is divided on whether it is a "reduced version" or a "study" of the large painting, a "record" made after its completion, or a "copy" by pupils or the workshop. In a letter of December 25, 1806 to his father-in-law, Ingres wrote that this subject was worthy of his work, and he seems to have been preparing it from around 1806.