How Homer Became Great Art – The Iliad

This 10 week course will explore how artists interpreted the epic poem - THE ILIAD. Lectures may be taken individually.

From great aerial sweeps to close-ups so vivid you can reach out and touch them, Homer’s Iliad gives you a charmed life in the midst of battle and a god’s-eye-view of the action, the city, the plain, the fields and mountains, the Greek ships at anchor, and the cast of thousands. This is a massively impressive and moving epic poem in its re-creation, unparalleled since, of the legendary city of Troy and everything that is said to have happened there. Small wonder that art has taken the story to its heart. Hot on the heels of the ancient painters whose scenes glow like eye-witness testimony, we find Botticelli, Caravaggio, Claude Lorrain, David, De Chirico, Flaxman, Fuseli, Giulio Romano, Il Padovanino, Il Pinturicchio, Ingres, Angelica Kauffman, Leighton, Moreau, Rubens, Tiepolo, Tischbein and others queueing up to catch our breath. Their imaginings of the epic’s drama stand beside fine translations of Homer’s Iliad in English.

Lectures may be taken individually

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