Arnold Böcklin, Odysseus und Polyphem / Odysseus and Polyphemus
Arnold Böcklin, Basel 1827 - San Domenico bei Fiesole 1901
Odysseus und Polyphem / Odysseus and Polyphemus (1896)
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Mass., USA
Böcklin’s original training as a landscape painter shines through in this unconventional interpretation of an episode from the ancient Greek epic poem the Odyssey. Crashing waves meet jagged rocks in a spray and scurry of foam. Escaping from the island of the Cyclopes - one-eyed, ill-tempered giants - the hero Odysseus calls back to the shore, taunting the Cyclops Polyphemus, who heaves a boulder after the boat. Unlike Academic colleagues who treated ancient mythology with reverence and solemnity, Böcklin often played up strange, grotesque, and even ridiculous elements of these stories, conjuring a pre-Classical world governed by violence and lust.
Source: Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Arnold Böcklin, Odysseus und Polyphem / Odysseus and Polyphemus
Arnold Böcklin, Basel 1827 - San Domenico bei Fiesole 1901
Odysseus und Polyphem / Odysseus and Polyphemus (1896)
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Mass., USA
Böcklin’s original training as a landscape painter shines through in this unconventional interpretation of an episode from the ancient Greek epic poem the Odyssey. Crashing waves meet jagged rocks in a spray and scurry of foam. Escaping from the island of the Cyclopes - one-eyed, ill-tempered giants - the hero Odysseus calls back to the shore, taunting the Cyclops Polyphemus, who heaves a boulder after the boat. Unlike Academic colleagues who treated ancient mythology with reverence and solemnity, Böcklin often played up strange, grotesque, and even ridiculous elements of these stories, conjuring a pre-Classical world governed by violence and lust.
Source: Museum of Fine Arts Boston