Troilus & Cressida (V.viii): Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1632): Achilles kills Hector.

This painting shows how a Renaissance contemporary saw the climatic event in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (V.viii), in which the Greek hero destroys Troy's best hope by ambush - in a treacherous way as shown in Shakespeare's play (V.viii). The fall of Troy came to represent a fall from an illustrious heroic age, remembered for centuries in oral tradition before being written down.

It is interesting to see that Shakespeare had already included Hector as one of the Nine Worthies, or heroes, in Love's Labour's Lost, albeit in a ridiculous enactment, but one in which Hector is defended by Don Armado: "The sweet war-man is dead and rotten. Sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the buried. When he breathed, he was a man." (V.ii.659-61). In the later he play he is perhaps the most likeable character, meriting Don Armado's defence.

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Picture and data courtesy of the Yorck Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share- Alike License (Wikipedia).