Wedgwood's Iphigenia is ... a guy?

IphigeniaAulis1.0110_Wedgwood

"The Sacrifice of Iphigenia" (1795) jasperware plaque is misnamed in Reid's OGCMA. (top right) It is actually Wedgwood's version of Camillo Pacetti's "Achilles in Scyros among the daughters of Lycomedes".

The plaque depicts the mythological moment when Odysseus discerns the young Achilles in hiding and outs him by offering a mixture of attractions for girls and for boys. Disclosed, Achilles is pressed into service at Troy, where the Greeks know prophetically they cannot conquer without him. (Ov. Met. 13.162-70)

Pacetti was employed by Wedgwood in Rome from 1787. Between 1788 and 1790, he created a 5-panel narrative of "The Whole Life of Achilles". Pacetti adapted the figures from the Luna marble puteal given to the Capitoline Museum by Pope Benedict XIV. Later he added "Priam Kneeling before Achilles". Only the Achilles on Scyros and Achilles receiving Priam were executed by the firm.

A handful of Wedgwood plaques are done with designs from Pacetti. Some of his designs are incorporated into vases. (R. Reilly, Wedgwood: a new illustrated dictionary, s.v. "Pacetti, Camillo")

Elizabeth Meteyard's Wedgwood Handbook: a manual for collectors ( ) lists among the "Uncatalogued Bas-Reliefs" (p. 151) "10. Achilles and the daughters of Lycomedes" and "8. Orestes and Pylades prisoners on the shores of Scythia", which clearly must be the subject of the two plaques in the illustration above.

This present note feels now (in August 2019) like a place-holder. I am unsure why OGCMA p. 603 lists "The Sacrifice of Iphigenia" in connection with the image above. While it is true that the lower plaque depicts Iphigenia's attempted sacrifice of Orestes and Pylades, the subject should not be included in Reid's article on "Iphigenia at AULIS". This is the only piece listed for Wedgwood by Reid in OGCMA, and clearly something is wrong. See also Meteyard p. 25o for mention of the pair of reliefs together "those [figures adapted to vases] on which we find such bas-reliefs as Achilles and the Daughters of Lycomedes, or the Sacrifice of Iphigenia."

OGCMA lists Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. [Cf. M.R. Scherer, The Legends of Troy in Art and Literature. New York: Phaidon, 1963. P. 250.] It is unknown how many of these plaques are in existence.