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En 1760, Pompeo Batoni est chargé par Philippe de Bourbon, duc de Parme de peindre ce tableau. Le thème choisi permet de louer assez directement l’éducation que Louise Élisabeth de France, épouse de don Philippe, entend donner à leur jeune fils Ferdinand confié à un prestigieux mentor, un homme des lumières, l’abbé de Condillac.
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In 1760 Pompeo Batoni was commissioned to do this painting by the duke of Parma, Philip of Bourbon. The chosen subject was a fairly direct way to praise the education that the duke’s wife, Louise Élisabeth of France, intended to give their young son Ferdinand by confiding him to a prestigious, enlightened tutor, the abbé de Condillac. In the painting Batoni focuses on the moment when Thetis, Achilles’ mother, hands her son over to Chiron; Batoni did not invent the subject, which was already present in Italian Renaissance art and resurfaced in painting done in Emilia in the eighteenth century. In Batoni’s canvas there are obvious echoes of the art of Correggio and Raphael (the latter’s Farnesina Galatea can be recognized in the figure of Thetis) along with clear reminiscences of Parmigianino (the sinuous lines of the lithe figure of young Achilles) and of ancient sculpture (Chiron’s resemblance to a youthful centaur unearthed by Monsignor Furietti in Hadrian’s Villa in 1736).
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