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)

Otherworldly

Duane Michals
Self Portrait with my Guardian Angel
1974
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

John O'Reilly
Apparition
2014
collage of printed paper
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts

Max Pechstein
Witches II
1907
woodcut
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Bjørn Ransve
Demon II
1971
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Robert Rauschenberg
Autobiography
1968
screenprint
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Martin Schaffner
The Planets and their Earthly Attributes
1533
oil on panel
(table top)
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Joseph Stella
A Vision
ca. 1925-26
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Herman de Vries
To Be
1974
letterpress
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Minor White
Windowsill Daydreaming
1958
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

attributed to Benedetto Bordone
Poliphilo transported by the Dream to a Landscape of Ruins
(from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna
published by Aldus Manutius in Venice)
1499
woodcut
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Joseph Cornell
Soap-Bubble Set (Lunar Space Object)
ca. 1959
assemblage - glass, wood, printed paper, found,objects
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Albrecht Dürer
Vision of the Seven Candlesticks
1498
woodcut
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Paola Ferrario
Bastrop Museum, Bastrop, Texas
1994
C-print
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Ancient Greek Culture
Artemis
marble
1st century AD
(adaptation of more ancient cult statue,
The Great Artemis of Ephesus)
National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Fernand Khnopff
Chimera
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels

Laura McPhee
Understory Flareups, Fourth of July, Creek Valley Road Wild Fire, Custer County, Idaho
2005
C-print
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Agamemnon:  First of all it is right for me to address Argos and its native gods, who are responsible, together with myself, for my return and for the punishment I have exacted from the city of Priam.  The gods heard pleas uttered not by men's tongues but through men's deaths, and without division of opinion cast their votes in the urn of blood for the destruction of Troy; to the vessel on the other side only hope approached – no hand filled it.  Even now the smoke rising from the city proclaims it fallen; the gusts of ruin are still alive and blowing, and the ashes, reluctant to die down, send forth thick puffs of wealth.  For this we must be deeply mindful of the gods' favour and pay them thanks, since we have punished that arrogant abduction, and on account of a woman a city has been ground into dust by the Argive beast, the offspring of the Horse, the shield-bearing host which made its jump about the time of the setting of the Pleiades; a lion, eater of raw flesh, leaped over the walls and licked its fill of royal blood. 

                                                            *              *              *

As regards other matters concerning the community and the gods, we will hold public assemblies and discuss them before the whole people together.  We must consider how to make what is good stay good for a long time; and for anything that requires healing remedies we shall endeavour to avert the painful effects of the disease, either by cautery or by judicious use of the knife.  Now I will enter my palace, come to the hearth of my home, and as my first act greet the gods who sped me on my way and have brought me back.  And may victory, since she has followed me thus far, remain with me always!

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

Depicted Confrontations - II

Anonymous French Artist
Pericles preventing Anaxagoras from drinking poison
ca. 1790
oil on canvas
Princeton University Art Museum

Frederic Leighton
Dramatic Scene in a Courtyard
ca. 1870
oil on canvas (sketch)
Princeton University Art Museum

workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni
Assassination and Funeral of Julius Caesar
ca. 1455-60
tempera on panel, transferred to canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giuseppe Maria Crespi
Democritus and Heraclitus
ca. 1730
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Pietro Novelli (il Monrealese)
Musical Contest between Apollo and Marsyas
ca. 1631-32
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen

Jean-Joseph Taillasson
Berenice reproaching Ptolemy
1802
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Giuseppe Zini
Pericles encountering Aspasia in the Studio of Phidias
ca. 1899
oil on canvas
Museo Civico di Modena

Guido Reni
Plebeian Putti battling Noble Putti
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, Rome

Francesco Incarnatini
Attack of a Robber
1642
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Albert Besnard
L'Avertissement
1900
etching and drypoint
Milwaukee Art Museum

Robert Longo
Study for Wrestlers
1979
drawing
Albright-Knox Art Gallery Buffalo, New York

Richard Bosman
Adversaries
1982
woodcut
Albright-Knox Art Gallery Buffalo, New York

Max Ernst
The Witch
1941
oil on canvas
Princeton University Art Museum

Perino del Vaga (Pietro Buonaccorsi)
St George and the Dragon
ca. 1535-40
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Francesco Scaramuzza
Alessandro Farnese at the Battle of Lepanto
1826
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Gioacchino Assereto
The Mocking of Job
ca. 1645-50
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

From the 'Antigone'

Overcome – O bitter sweetness,
Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl –

The rich man and his affairs,

The fat flocks and the fields' fatness,
Mariners, rough harvesters;
Overcome Gods upon Parnassus;

Overcome the Empyrean; hurl

Heaven and Earth out of their places,

That in the same calamity
Brother and brother, friend and friend,
Family and family,

City and city may contend,
By that great glory driven wild.

Pray I will and sing I must,

And yet I weep – Oedipus' child
Descends into the loveless dust.

– W.B. Yeats (1933)

Guercino - Drawings, 1630-1640 (Independent of Paintings)

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Marcus Curtius plunging into the Chasm
ca. 1630-35
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St John the Evangelist
ca. 1630
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Virgin and Child with escaped Goldfinch
ca. 1630-40
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Vocal Concert
ca. 1630-35
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Witch
ca. 1640
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Symbolic or Magical Subject
ca. 1630
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Study of a Young Monk
ca. 1630-40
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Two Seated Women drying their Hair before a Fire
ca. 1635
drawing
Courtauld Gallery, London

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Study of a Youth
ca. 1630-40
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Study of a Young Man with a Lance
ca. 1635-40
drawing
private collection

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Study of a Fallen Soldier
ca. 1630-40
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Study for Sibyl
ca. 1630-40
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Mountainous Landscape with Figures
ca. 1630-35
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Landscape with Wind and Sheep
ca. 1630-40
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

attributed to Guercino
Study of a Youth
ca. 1630
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor