Visualized

Garofalo (Benvenuto Tisi)
Pico transformed by Circe into a Woodpecker
(illustration to Ovid)
ca. 1530-35
oil on panel
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Anonymous Flemish Painter
Ulysses demanding that Circe reverse her Enchantment
ca. 1570-75
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Bartolomeo Passarotti
Portrait of Ulisse Aldrovandi as Ulysses with Circe
ca. 1575
oil on canvas
Palazzo Fava, Bologna

Pier Francesco Mola
Homer dictating his Poetry
before 1666
drawing
British Museum

Giacomo del Pò
Circe working her Magic
ca. 1708-1710
oil on canvas
Palazzo Lanfranchi, Matera

Sir James Thornhill
Mercury and Calypso
(study for painted panel at Kiveton House)
ca. 1715
drawing
British Museum

Mathieu Ignace van Brée
Alexander the Great committing the writings of Homer to Safety
ca. 1810
ink and gouache on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Louis Vincent Léon Pallière
Ulysses and Telemachus slaying the Suitors
1812
oil on canvas
Petit Palais, Paris

Christophe Thomas Degeorge
Ulysses and Telemachus slaying the Suitors
1812
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art Roger Quilliot, Clermont-Ferrand

François Chifflart
Ulysses recognized by Euriclea
1849
oil on canvas
Musée de l'Hôtel Sandelin, Saint-Omer

Julia Margaret Cameron
Circe
1865
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Arnold Böcklin
Sirens
1875
tempera on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Louis Chalon
Circe with companions of Ulysses as Pigs
1888
oil on canvas
private collection

Jean-Alfred Marioton
Ulysses and Nausicaa
1888
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Max Klinger
The Siren
1895
oil on canvas
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Florence

Joseph Cornell
Circe III (Surface and Volume in Nature)
ca. 1960-65
printed paper collage and pigment on board
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Rodolfo Abularach
Circe
1969
drawing
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

But standing now I see

The diver's brilliant bow,

His quiet break from the sea,

With one trained movement throw

The hair from his forehead;

And I, stung by the sun,

Think, semi-satisfied

That, ere the smile is done,

The eye deliberate

May qualify the joy

And that which we create

We also may destroy.

– W.H. Auden (1927)