Ten Odyssey-Inspired Artworks Spanning 2,500 Years

A Galerie Magazine survey traces visual responses to Homer's Odyssey from ancient Greek pottery to 20th-century collage, highlighting ten key works. The earliest is The Siren Vase (c. 480–470 BCE) by the anonymous Siren Painter, an Athenian red-figure piece at the British Museum. Emperor Tiberias commissioned the sculptural group Blinding of Polyphemus for his villa at Sperlonga, now reconstructed at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's The Apotheosis of Homer (1827) at the Louvre crowns the poet with artists across time. A 3rd-century BCE papyrus fragment at the Met contains variant lines from Book 20. Angelica Kauffman's The Sorrows of Telemachus (1783), also at the Met, illustrates a 1699 fanfic by François Fénelon. Francesco Primaticcio's drawing Odysseus and His Companions Fighting the Cicones (c. 1555–60) survives from a destroyed Fontainebleau fresco cycle. John Flaxman's Ulysses at the Table of Circe (1793) uses spare contours inspired by ancient vases. Frederick Leighton's Nausicaa (1878), now in a private collection, shows the princess at a doorway. Giorgio de Chirico's The Return of Ulysses (late Neometaphysical period) at the Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico places a rowboat in a furnished room. Romare Bearden's Black Odyssey (1977) comprises 20 collages and watercolors with Black protagonists, addressing exile and migration.