Hecuba discovering the body of Polydorus

Adriaen van Stalbemt was active in Antwerp and Middelburg, and also spent ten months in 1633-4 in England. His style was eclectic, revealing the influences of Jan Breughel I, Hendrick van Balen, Paul Bril, and Adam Elsheimer, to whom a group of Stalbemt's pictures had previously been given (see K. Andrews, 'A Pseudo-Elsheimer Group: Adriaen van Stalbemt as Figure painter', in The Burlington Magazine, CXV, 1973, pp. 301-6). This beautifully preserved panel exhibits Stalbemt's characteristically meticulous brush technique, from the miniature detailing of the shells in the foreground, and the crisply delineated foliage, to the classical town that appears through the vaporous mist along the coastline beyond.

At some point after 1953 this painting was altered, painting out the floating figure of Polydorus and three of the female figures in the background which led to differing titles when it appeared at auction. By the time of the 1989 Brussels sale, the restoration had been removed and revealed the three standing women along with the body in the water. This prompted further discussion on the subject matter, which has been identified as the story of Ulysses or Nausicaa, and at times described as the tale of Hero and Leander. In 2007, Elizabeth McGrath of the Warburg Institute recognized the unusual scene as portraying Hecuba, the wife of King Priam of Troy, discovering the body of her last son, Polydorus (Metamorphoses, XIII, 482-575). Hecuba (seen seated with her arms outstretched) has come to the sea with her handmaidens to wash the body of her sacrificed daughter, Polyxena. Instead she finds the corpse of her son being washed up onto the shore, having been murdered by Polymnestor, to whom he had been sent for safekeeping during the Trojan war. Dante described this episode: 'And when fortune overturned the pride of the Trojans, who dared everything, so that both the king and his kingdom were destroyed, Poor wretched captured Hecuba, after she saw her Polydorus on the beach, was driven mad by sorrow and began barking like a dog...' (Inferno XXX: 13-20).