1800–1820

This rarely depicted motif, taken from Homer's Iliad (XXII, 460 ss), shows Andromache lying unconscious after she had seen Achilles dragging Hector’s corpse behind his chariot around the walls of Troy. This secondary event can be seen in the landscape in the background on the right. The supine Andromache is surrounded by servants hurrying to help her. Abel produced this painting in Rome for Count Fries, together with a companion piece, The Farewell of Hector and Andromache. Two watercoloured and highlighted pen drawings in the Albertina in Vienna (Nos. 4907 and 4908) are closely linked to these paintings; both are signed and dated 1806, which is also the date of the two oil paintings.

It must be noted that the posture of Andromache's legs was copied from the marble statue in the church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome, which was created in 1599 by Stefano Maderno and shows the corpse of the martyred Saint Cecilia. The raised hand of the figure beside her, that of the kneeling servant woman, repeats a motif from Raphael's Transfiguration on the Mount (Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana).

Restored: 1983, Kemal Selmanović.
Provenance: Count Fries, Vienna; LBG 124 (in the old inventory as by Joseph Abel); Rogaška Slatina spa, 1903; acquired by the Narodna galerija, Ljubljana, 1932, old Inv. No. 536 (first half 19C: Dead Girl).
Exhibition: 1983, Ljubljana, No. 84.
Lit.: Andresen 1869, p. 71; Thieme-Becker, I, 1907, p. 19; Garms 1972, Cat. No. 3, p. 100 (reference to the painting only in connection with the drawing); Zeri [& Rozman] 1983, p. 155, Cat. No. 84, Fig. 89.