Böcklin’s original training as a landscape painter shines through in this unconventional interpretation of an episode from the ancient greek epic poem the odyssey. Crashing waves meet jagged rocks in a spray and scurry of foam. Escaping from the island of the cyclopes—one-eyed, ill-tempered giants—the hero odysseus calls back to the shore, taunting the cyclops polyphemus, who heaves a boulder after the boat. Unlike academic colleagues who treated ancient mythology with reverence and solemnity, böcklin often played up strange, grotesque, and even ridiculous elements of these stories, conjuring a pre-classical world governed by violence and lust. Object Type: painting. Genre: mythological painting. Date: 1896. Dimensions: height: 66 cm (25.9 in); width: 150 cm (59 in). Medium: oil and tempera on panel. Collection: Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Arnold Böcklin - Odysseus and Polyphemus
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