Plate XLI - Peleus and Thetis

This picture, plate XLI, is nearly of the same size as that of Achilles. A degree of reluctance may certainly be perceived in the air of the female, and the winged genius seems to be urging her to give her right hand, while she suffers the left only to be taken.

Peleus had been formerly married to Antigone, the daughter of Eurytion, in Pthia, after his flight from Aegina ; and it does not seem impossible that the three children below him might be the offspring of that marriage, and that the female represents Polydora, the mother of Mnestheus, who expelled Theseus from Attica. Some have said that Thetis was the daughter of Lycomedes, King of Scyros, and that all her children, except Achilles, died young.

There is a landscape in the background, but of no peculiar character.

The marine group, which is placed above this picture to fill up the plate, is taken from the house now called of the Dioscuri, from certain pictures of Castor and Pollux in the entrance, and perhaps presents, for the first time, the union of the lobster with the human form in the person of a sea-god.