The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished

The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished is a large oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1825 and now in the National Gallery of Scotland. Inspired by the Elgin Marbles and intended by the artist to provide a moral lesson on "the beauty of mercy", it shows a near-nude warrior whose sword has broken, forced to his knees in front of another near-nude soldier who prepares to inflict a killing blow. A woman, also near-nude, clutches the victorious warrior to beg him for mercy. Very unusually for a history painting of the period, The Combat does not depict a scene from history, literature or religion and is not based on an existing artwork, but is instead a scene from the artist's own imagination.

When it was shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1825, it attracted near-universal praise from critics for its technical excellence, its fusion of the styles of different schools of painting, and its subject matter. Nevertheless, it failed to find a buyer at the Summer Exhibition, and was instead bought by fellow artist John Martin. The painting proved too large for Martin's house, and in 1831 he sold it on to the Royal Scottish Academy. It was transferred in 1910 to the National Gallery of Scotland, where it remains.

William Etty was born in 1787, the son of a York baker and miller. He began as an apprentice printer in Hull. On completing his seven-year apprenticeship he moved at the age of 18 to London "with a few pieces of chalk crayons", with the intention of becoming a history painter in the tradition of the Old Masters. Strongly influenced by the works of Titian and Rubens, he submitted paintings to the Royal Academy of Arts and the British Institution, all of which were either rejected or received scant attention when exhibited.

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