Achilles among the Daughters of Lycomedes

Francesco de Mura within a period of roughly eighteen months (1741-43) painted five ceilings in the king’s summer apartment, part of which occupied the north wing of the Palazzo Reale in Turin. His subjects were taken from Greek mythology, and four of these ceilings have survived in what was subsequently turned into an archive.

This oil sketch is one of the bozzetti created for the lost ceiling painting, destroyed in 1837.