Image: Arnold Böcklin - Odysseus and Polyphemus

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 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.
Title: Odysseus and Polyphemus 
Credit: Sotheby's London, 11 June 2012, lot 8 (has longer description)
Author: Arnold Böcklin
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No