Filippo Albacini’s The Wounded Achilles: the pose, the arrow and his heel

Fillippo Albacini’s The Wounded Achilles. Photograph: British Museum/© The Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth

Troy story …

This 1825 neoclassical Achilles, clutching at his single vulnerable spot, hails from the sculpture gallery at Chatsworth House. It is testament to how each new generation bends the stories of the Trojan war to its own inclinations.

Body beautiful …

An enticing series of sinuous curves draws our gaze, from the ankle pierced by a phallic arrow to the perfect torso, open and vulnerable, and a head thrown back, both in resignation and invitation.

Man down …

This is partly about Achilles’s grief for his slaughtered friend Patroclus and acceptance of his warrior’s fate. Far from the traditional statue of the active male hero, it also recalls countless passive, reclining female nudes.

Eye of the beholder …

Made at a time when gay love could have resulted in a death sentence, its homoeroticism wasn’t straightforward. It came from a culture shaped by the archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s argument that appreciation of the male body was essential to an appreciation of art.

Included in Troy: Myth and Reality, British Museum, WC1, to 8 March