Priam leaving to beg Achilles for Hector's body

The present oil sketch is a modello for a painting of the same subject executed by Vien in Rome and exhibited in the 1783 Salon. Formerly in the Musée d'Alger, but now lost, the Salon painting once formed a pair with another composition based on Homer's Iliad, Patroclus handing Briseis over to Agamemnon's messengers, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Arras. The pair was commissioned by the Comte d'Angiviller, who, in a letter to Vien dated 20 September 1779, writes that the king wanted a pair of paintings by him for the 1783 Salon, whereafter Jean Baptiste Marie Pierre, the Premier peintre du roi, selected the precise subjects from The Iliad. The works were executed in Rome, where Vien was living, and as requested sent to Paris in time for the annual exhibition.

A drawing by the artist associated with the present picture and its finished version is in the Béziers Museum.