The Infant Pyrrhus at the court of Glaucias, King of the Illyrians, about to embrace an altar of the gods; and Dido supervising the cutting of oxhide strips to obtain the site of Carthage

The biography of Pyrrhus (c. 318-272 B.C.), King of Epirus, is first told by Plutarch in his Lives. Exiled as an infant, he was taken to the court of King Glaucias, who, as he feared an enemy of Pyrrhus's father, decided to harbour the young exile when he embraced an altar of the gods which was interpreted as a sign from heaven. Pyrrhus was installed as King of Epirus when he was twelve, and later led a Greek army in the first recorded battle against the Romans in 280 B.C., followed by a further victory against them at Asculum in 279 B.C. This was won at so heavy a cost that Pyrrhus is recorded as declaring 'One more victory and we are undone': hence the expression Pyrrhic victory. The subject of the second picture, the founding of Carthage, in circa 850 B.C., is better known. Dido, the daughter of Belus, King of Tyre, fled to North Africa where she bought from the natives as much land as could be contained by the skin of an ox; she tricked them by cutting the skin into thin strips which was sufficient to extend around the hill, Byrsa, on which the citadel of Carthage was to be built.

The two historical legends are apparently unrelated; there is a link, however, in the stories' theme of the reception and establishment of exiles in new lands. Given that these pictures were painted during the eighty years war, at a time when large numbers of people were displaced, it is possible that they were commissioned as a pair on this theme, the view that they are a pair is supported by the rarity of the story of Pyrrhus and the exceptional size of the copper supports. As the two pictures are of the same size, on the same type of support and by the same artist, they are offered as one lot. Attributed to Jan Boeckhorst in 1983, the attribution would perhaps not gain general accceptance today, as his style and oeuvre have been more clearly defined since then. Rather, the handling seems similar to that of the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence and Saint Catherine transported to Mount Sinai in the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, attributed by Descamps in 1769 to Erasmus Quellinus and included by J.P. de Bruyn in his 1989 monograph on the artist (no. 87).