# Chryses Imploring the Help of Apollo, from Iliad, Book I

- By: Johan Tobias Sergel (Swedish, 1740-1814)
- Date: 1765/66
- Medium: Black chalk on off-white laid paper, tipped onto wove paper
- Classification: Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions: 43.3 × 34.8 cm (17 1/16 × 13 3/4 in.)
- Culture: Sweden
- Credit line: Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/241156)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/59ec5b2e-c4e9-6c0e-c3b6-f7eb68937b5e/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Teens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

This drawing by Sweden’s most important Neoclassical sculptor and draftsman depicts a scene from Homer’s Iliad, set during the Trojan War. In the drawing, Chryses, a Trojan priest of Apollo, prays to Apollo for help after Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army, has refused to return his kidnapped daughter. In response, Apollo inflicts a plague upon the Greeks. Agamemnon returns Chryses’s daughter, but demands Chryses’s second kidnapped daughter, who is held by Achilles, in exchange.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0