Description
Calypso kept Odysseus on her island for seven years, offered him eternal life if he would stay, and could not stop him going every day to the shore to look at the sea. Arnold Böcklin painted that stalemate in 1883, the same year as the third Isle of the Dead. The goddess sits at the mouth of her cave on a red cloth, half naked, holding a lyre, looking at the man. The man stands on a black rock wrapped in a blue cloak from head to foot, looking at the horizon. Between them is a wall of stone. Neither speaks.
It is one of the few paintings of the episode that takes Homer’s side: Calypso is beautiful and the offer is real, and Odysseus wants to go home anyway. The picture is in the Kunstmuseum Basel. Our hand-painted reproduction is made in oil on canvas from the original, and the blue of the cloak, the one cold colour in a warm picture, is mixed to match.
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