This article accompanies the fable
Homer's Women



Odysseus and Calypso

Feast of the Nymph Calypso for Odysseus by Jan Brueghel the Elder (with Hendrick de Clerck) ca. 1616. It has also been translated as A Fantastic Cave Landscape with Odysseus & Calypso. The real question is: What is he doing with his hand? Why would he leave?

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

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