Fixing the viewer with a dreamy gaze, the fair-haired Telemachus grasps Eucharis's thigh with his right hand while holding his sword upright with the other. In the 1699 French novel Les Aventures de Télémaque, loosely based on characters from the Odyssey, the author Fénelon describes how Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, fell passionately in love with the beautiful nymph Eucharis. His duty as a son, however, required that he end their romance and depart in search of his missing father.