<div class="description">
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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus" class="extiw" title="en:Odysseus">Odysseus</a> calls back to the shore, taunting the Cyclops <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphemus" class="extiw" title="en:Polyphemus">Polyphemus</a>, 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.</div>
<bdi><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Arnold_B%C3%B6cklin" class="extiw" title="w:en:Arnold Böcklin"><span title="Swiss painter, draftsman, graphic artist and sculptor (1827-1901)">Arnold Böcklin</span></a>
</bdi>
1896<div style="display: none;">date QS:P571,+1896-00-00T00:00:00Z/9</div>
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="//www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/5AEL9TzTNMe8IA">5AEL9TzTNMe8IA</a> — <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Google_Arts_%26_Culture" class="extiw" title="w:en:Google Arts &amp; Culture"><span title="app and website exploring partner museums">Google Arts &amp; Culture</span></a>