This grand composition by Pierre Subleyras was first attributed to the artist by Pierre Rosenberg, at the time of the 1989 exhibition at the Matthiesen Gallery in London. It likely dates from circa 1735, just after Subleyras left Palazzo Mancini (the seat of the French Academy in Rome) but before his 1739 marriage to Maria Felice Tibaldi, a portrait miniaturist. 

The subject is taken from the story of Achilles, set during the Trojan War.  Knowing that her son would die if he fought in the war, Achilles's mother disguised her son as a woman and sent him to live hidden amongst King Lycomedes's daughters. When war threatened, Ulysses and his Greek comrades went to fetch him.  In order to expose him, they brought the daughters a number of gifts, including some weapons amongst the jewelry and clothing;  Achilles instinctively picked up the weapons rather than the more feminine gifts, exposing his true identity. 

Pierre Subleyras was one of the most important French portraitists and painters of religious compositions in the first half of the 18th century.  After briefly training with his father, in 1717 Subleyras entered the studio of Antoine Rivalz in Toulouse. He moved to Paris in 1726 and almost immediately won the Prix de Rome; he moved to Italy in 1728 and stayed in Rome for the remainder of his life.  Many of his patrons came from the minor French nobility in addition to local Italian and private collectors and religious orders.  His sober and restrained classicism was a harbinger of later Roman painting and the artist filled innumerable commissions for history and religious paintings, as well as portraits and genre paintings.