Odysseus and Calypso

Odysseus has spent seven years on the nymph Calypso's island. She has offered him immortality if he stays. He wants to go home. Böcklin painted the impasse: Odysseus in a dark cloak, staring at the sea; Calypso naked on the rock, looking at his back. He doesn't turn. She has trapped him in paradise. They never touch. Böcklin painted the volcanic rocks from a sketching trip to Ischia — Sicilian geology, not any Greek island in Homer. The painting is one of the most quietly heartbreaking scenes of the entire Symbolist movement. Now at Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel @kunstmuseumbasel