Homer's Women

Calypso in paintings

Nigel Bruce

Jul 31, 2023 • 2 min read

William Hamilton: "Calypso receiving Telemachus and Mentor in the Grotto" (detail) (18th Century)

The real question is: What is Odysseus doing with his hand in the painting below? Why would he leave Calypso? And who are all those other people? I had always thought of Calypso as living alone. Flemish Baroque painters apparently disagree: I suppose magic only went so far and someone had to cook and clean.

*Feast of the Nymph Calypso for Odysseus*, aka *A Fantastic Cave Landscape with Odysseus & Calypso*. I'm unclear on the painter(s) or location - perhaps Jan Brueghel the Elder (with Hendrick de Clerck) circa 1616.

There are even more people in this painting from around the same time, which places Odysseus on a throne, no less:

Hendrick van Balen the Elder: "Odysseus as Guest at the Nymph Calypso" - Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien

Below is the most Romantic (and the least believable) version: Calypso waving goodbye?

Samuel Palmer: Calypso’s Island, Departure of Ulysses, or *Farewell to Calypso* (1848-49) in The Whitworth, University of Manchester

In 1883 Swiss Symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin rendered his version, where things are not going so well:

Bocklin-Calypso-Odysseus — Kunstmuseum Basel

In Herbert James Draper's Calypso's Isle (1897), this would appear to be from Odysseus' point of view. Happier times...