Painted when the artist was not yet 31, the work severely and pointedly contrasts the grandeur and might of a cloud-borne Olympian male deity against that of a diminutive and half nude nymph.
Ingres' subject matter is borrowed from an episode in Homer 's Iliad when the sea nymph Thetis begs Jupiter to intervene and guide the fate of her son Achilles , who was at the time embroiled in the Trojan War.
In contrast, Thetis is rendered in sensuous curves and portrayed in supplication to the mercy of a cruel god who holds the fate of her son in his hands. Thetis' right hand falls on Jupiter's hip with a suggestion of erotic caress, while the dark green of her dress accents the dread and foreboding of the bare landscape behind. Her clothing is drawn up against her lower hip, and seems about to fall off. The focal point of the work is Thetis' left hand extended vertically upright as she attempts to stroke the beard of the god.
Jupiter's pose is closely based on that of the famous chryselephantine sculpture , the Statue of Zeus at Olympia Zeus being Jupiter's Greek equivalent , one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. This was made by the Greek sculptor of the Classical period , Phidias , circa BC and destroyed in Antiquity, but its pose is known from coins and small replicas.
Here the pose is reversed right to left, and the arm to the viewer's right is higher than in the original, which held out a statue of Nike. Jupiter and Thetis was painted to meet the artist's obligations to the French Academy in Rome , [ 3 ] and although its overhand tone correctly reflected the patriarchal bias of Napoleon 's regime in its contrast between male power and female subservience, [ 3 ] it is generally regarded as a rejection of such values.
