At the end of the year that Odysseus and his crew stayed with the sorceress Circe, she helpfully advised him that he would have to sail past the Sirens, two to five creatures who lured men to their death with their singing. In preparation, Odysseus got his sailors to plug their ears with beeswax before they reached the Sirens, so that they couldn’t hear their song, and to bind him to the mast. He gave them strict instructions that under no circumstances, no matter what he said at the time, were they to loosen his bonds, as he would be listening to the Sirens’ song.
As the group reached the Sirens, Odysseus instructed his men to release him, but instead they bound him even more closely to the mast. Once they had passed safely from earshot of the Sirens, Odysseus used his facial expression to inform his men, who then released him, and they sailed on.
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William Etty’s The Sirens and Ulysses from about 1837 is one the pioneering accounts in paint of this story. His three naked Sirens are all woman, one playing a lyre, and doing their best to draw the sailors from Odysseus’ ship to a shore with the remains of earlier victims.
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Edward Poynter’s portrait of The Siren from about 1864 is non-narrative, and doesn’t deface her body with anything birdlike.
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Arnold Böcklin adopts an unusual approach of almost dereferencing Odysseus in this painting of Sirens from 1875, although there is an approaching vessel which could be his, and making the Sirens fill his canvas. The Sirens shown are very human down to the waist, below which they resemble birds. One sits facing us, clearly in full voice, and alluring in looks. The other, her back towards us, appears to be playing a flute-like instrument, and looks rather obese, to the point of almost being comical, her right breast laid upon a flat-topped rock. At their feet are three human skulls and other bones to indicate their graver intentions.
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Gustave Moreau’s The Sirens (1882) shows them as beautiful figures in a static scene, with a saturnine setting sun. There is, though, a lone sail on the horizon that hasn’t yet attracted their attention. Their lower legs turn into the writhing coils of sea serpents.
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Moreau’s later group portrait of The Sirens (c 1885) is more complete, with Odysseus sailing past, but its three figures are clearly all woman and zero bird.
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John William Waterhouse’s Ulysses and the Sirens (1891) is closer to the Homeric account, although he provides a total of seven Sirens, shown as large eagle-like birds of prey with the head and neck of beautiful women. He has added bandage wrappings around the head of each sailor to make it clear that their ears are stopped from hearing sound, a visual device that links neatly with the text. His Sirens are clearly singing, particularly the one closest to the viewer, who is challenging the hearing protection of one of the sailors. Another sailor, at the stern of the ship (left of the painting), is seen clutching his ears.
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The Sirens (1903) marked Henrietta Rae’s return to narrative works featuring classical nudes. Odysseus’ ship is in the distance, as the three beautiful Sirens use their pipes and lyre to try to lure the occupants to their deaths.
Late mythology suggests an unpleasant end for these Sirens: Hera challenged them to a singing contest against the Muses. When the latter won, the penalty they exacted of the Sirens was to have all their feathers plucked out to turn into crowns. As a result of that disgrace, the Sirens turned white, fell into the sea, and formed the islands including modern Souda, on the north-west coast of Crete in the Mediterranean.
The next challenge to Odysseus and his crew was the combined perils of the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, which claimed six of his men.
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Ary Renan’s Charybdis and Scylla (1894) shows Charybdis the whirlpool with its mountainous standing waves at the left, and the rocks of Scylla at the right.
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This fragment of fresco by Alessandro Allori shows Odysseus’ ship passing Charybdis, depicted as a huge head vomiting forth the rough waters of the whirlpool at the right, and the dogs’ heads of Scylla, which have captured three of Odysseus’ crew.
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Henry Fuseli’s Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis (1794-96) is a vivid depiction of Odysseus passing these twin hazards. He stands on the fo’c’sle of his ship, holding his shield up in defence as the oarsmen down below him struggle to propel the craft through the Straits of Messina.
The remaining crew then overrode Odysseus’ orders and landed on Thrinacia, where they also ignored the warnings given earlier by Tiresias and Circe, and hunted the sacred cattle of Helios. That brought disaster for them in shipwreck, drowning everyone except Odysseus, who clung on to a fig tree and was washed up on the island of Ogygia, where he was held captive by Calypso.
Calypso was a nymph, daughter of Atlas the Titan. She detained Odysseus for seven years as her ‘immortal husband’, enchanting him with her singing as she weaved with a golden shuttle on her loom. However, Odysseus realised that he wanted to be re-united with his wife Penelope, and the gods finally released him.
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In Arnold Böcklin’s Odysseus and Calypso (1883), she’s shown in front of a cave on the beach, holding her lyre rather than weaving. Odysseus is at the far left, staring into the distance, homesick for Penelope, and wishing that he was released from Calypso’s control. This is a stark image of a barren landscape and empty relationship.
It was now more than eight years since Odysseus and his ships had left the ruins of Troy for their homes in Ithaca, where he presumed that his wife Penelope was still awaiting his return.