Ajax - Fontana

A print of Fontana's Ajax — an Italian reproductive engraving of the Greek hero after classical sculpture, drawn in the clean line of the European printmaking tradition that made the antique available to 17th and 18th century artists across Europe.

Ajax the Great — Telamonian Ajax, to distinguish him from the "lesser" Ajax son of Oileus — is, after Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors at Troy. Homer's Iliad makes him the bulwark of the Greek line: he holds the ships almost single-handed when Hector breaks through, fights Hector in single combat to a standstill, and leads the men who carry Achilles' body out of the fighting. His tragedy comes after the Iliad: when the dead Achilles' armour is awarded by the Greeks to Odysseus rather than to him, Ajax, driven mad by the slight, massacres a flock of sheep in the belief that they are his enemies, and when he recovers his wits in shame falls on his own sword. Sophocles' Ajax is the classic treatment.

Reproductive engraving — line-engraved plates after celebrated paintings and antique sculptures — was a primary channel for the distribution of fine art from the Renaissance through the 19th century.