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

Richard Westall: "Telemachus in the Bower of Calypso" (1765-1836), Glasgow Museums Resource Centre

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 — Arnold Böcklin: "Odysseus und Kalypso" (1883), Kunstmuseum Basel

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

Herbert James Draper: "Calypso's Isle" (1897), Manchester Art Gallery

Finally, it appears Odysseus has had it with Calypso and eating grapes and he is ready to leave, in this work by Scottish painter and illustrator Sir William Russell Flint in 1907.