Ulysses and Neoptolemos deprive Philoctète bow and arrows of Hercules

The subject of this 1800 canvas — Ulysses and Neoptolemus taking from Philoctetes the bow of Hercules — comes from Sophocles's tragedy Philoctetes, one of the great dramas of Greek theatre and a text central to Enlightenment discussions of natural virtue, social corruption, and the ethics of deception. Philoctetes, abandoned on the island of Lemnos because of a festering wound, possesses the bow of Hercules without which Troy cannot fall. Ulysses sends the young Neoptolemus to deceive him into surrendering it. The tragedy explores whether deception is justified by necessity, and whether the corrupted cunning of Ulysses or the honest innocence of Philoctetes represents the truly heroic nature. For Fabre, a student of David, the subject combined the Neoclassical programme of painting from Greek tragedy with a morally complex narrative that avoided the simpler heroic exempla of his teacher's most famous works. The canvas is at the Musée Fabre, Montpellier, the museum named for the artist himself.

The confrontation between the three figures — wounded Philoctetes, the cunning Ulysses, and the reluctant Neoptolemus — is managed through differential body language that communicates the moral asymmetries of the scene. Philoctetes's physical weakness from his wound contrasts with the moral weakness of those deceiving him. Fabre renders the island setting with spare attention to the landscape of isolation.