Hecuba' s Grief
Ca. 1630.Not on display
Both the royal inventories and Stchavinsky (1912) identify this scene as the story of Hecuba, wife of Priam of Troy. Wichmann (1923) disagrees, believing it to be the Finding of the bodies of Hero and Leander, an interpretation supported by Valdivieso (1973), Pigler (1974), Salerno (1977-80) and Sluijter (1986). Luna (1984), however, has called attention to the inscription HECVBA / OVIDIVS./ LIB. 13 on the stele of the tunnel arch on the right, thereby confirming the initial identification of the canvas as an illustration of Hecuba`s discovery of the bodies of her children, Polydorus and Polyxena.
The scene, which is taken from Ovid`s Metamorphoses (book XIII, verses 399–575), depicts the moment when Hecuba goes to collect water to bathe the body of her daughter Polyxena, sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles. On so doing, she discovers the corpse of her son Polydorus on the shore, murdered and thrown into the sea by Polymestor, King of Thrace, in whose care he had been placed as a child by Priam, his father.
More specifically, Hecuba`s unrelenting gaze and motionless attitude, coupled with her crown and sumptuous apparel -which, as Goldsmith (1994) is right to observe, does not match her situation at the time, as the captive and slave of Ulysses- suggest that the painting depicts verses 545 and 546: Then [her rage] blazed out, and she, even as she were still a queen / determined on vengeance, her mind filled with nothing but the thought of punishment. This subject was seldom portrayed in earlier or even contemporary painting. Indeed, it would appear only to have been treated previously by Antonio Tempesta in one of his prints for the series of Ovid`s Metamorphoses (1606).
The representation is set in daylight and the background features classical architecture, recreating the tomb of Cecilia Metela on Rome`s Via Appia and the Temple of the Sybil in Tivoli. The bell tower and the castle in the background cannot be identified. The compositional structure, pictorial refinement and renunciation of detail in favour of greater expressiveness suggest other works painted by Bramer around 1630.
Until 1985, this picture appears in the Prado`s catalogues as companion piece to Abraham and the Three Angels. However, despite their stylistic proximity, the support and measurements do not coincide and, above all, there appears to be no connection between this scene from the Metamorphoses and the story from the Bible, the only common denominator being the destruction of the two cities, Sodom and Troy.
On the other hand, Hecuba`s Grief has the same support and measurements as two other Bramer scenes, Hecuba`s Finding of the Bodies of Pyramus and Thisbe and Niobe’s Discovery of the Bodies of her Children, which also illustrate verses by Ovid. It is therefore possible that all three were part of a series devoted to dramatic episodes from the Metamorphoses (Posada Kubissa, T.: Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, 2009, p. 298).
