HOW HOMER BECAME GREAT ART – THE ODYSSEY/THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA, CALYPSO, SHIPWRECK (BOOKS 4 & 5)

Homer’s Odyssey, one of the greatest epic poems ever written, tells its story as a film would, in non-stop episodes of action and flashback. Its pages are alive with the dramatic adventures of the Greek hero Odysseus (also known to us as Ulysses) who, ten years after the end of the war at Troy, has still not come home to the island of Ithaca. In fact, his life has been locked into a wandering voyage made thrilling by danger and enchantment in spectacular encounters with the elemental and supernatural worlds. Artists ever since have loved The
Odyssey with graphic energy and their imaginings illuminate the finest translations of this poem into English. Classical Art’s visions of the poem when it was new create exciting contrasts with paintings, watercolours and drawings by Pinturicchio, Titian, Brueghel, Rubens, Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Angelica Kauffmann, Fuseli, David, Turner, Ingres, Corot, Leighton, Waterhouse, Matisse, Chagall and di Chirico, and exquisite sets of illustrations by Flaxman and Flint.

Telemachus reaches Sparta, meets Menelaus and Helen (now restored to her husband after the episode in Troy), and learns that his father Odysseus has been a captivated castaway for seven years on the island of Ogygia, home to the
goddess Calypso. Hermes frees him from her power and he builds a getaway raft. Then Poseidon strikes.

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