Philoctetes was a Greek archer who possessed the bow and arrows of Heracles, aka Hercules. On the way to the Trojan War, he was bitten by a snake and left to die on the island of Lemnos because the rest of the Greeks couldn't stand the stench of his festering wound. So much for camaraderie. Anyway, the Greeks soon learned they couldn't win the war without the magic archery set, so they sent Odysseus to fetch it, whereupon he found Philoctetes still living and rescued him. He fully recovered, went to war, and later founded a Greek colony in Italy. Herman Bissen sculpted him over the winter of 1854-55. The title is sometimes given as The Wounded Philoctetes.
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ReplyDeletePhiloctetes like Job, forsaken and yet persevered.
Bissen studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen and became an assistant to the great Thorvaldsen. Like many artist he also studied in Rome, all roads led to Rome for artists in his time.