Hector and Andromache

In Book VI of Homer’s Iliad, Troy’s greatest hero, King Priam’s son Hector, makes his way to his own house as the Greek armies assault the city. Somehow knowing that he will not survive the war, Hector longs to see his wife, Andromache, and infant son before rejoining the battle. The war still has a long way to go, and Hector does not die until Book XXII (at the hand of Achilles). But this scene—captured here by the 19th-century artist Anton Losenko, in a painting from the Tetraykov Gallery in Moscow—foreshadows the hero’s demise.