Lot 1264 D α

We would like to thank Dr. Petra Tiegel-Hertfelder, Bonn, for confirming the authenticity of this work after examining the original and determining the subject of the picture to be a motif from Homer's “Odyssey”. This epic describes the ten-year wanderings of King Odysseus of Ithaca after the Trojan War. The present scene describes Odysseus's farewell to the nymph Calypso, who held the hero on her island of Ogygia for seven years after a shipwreck and only let him go again at the behest of the gods. Even though Odysseus wanted to return to his homeland of Ithaca and to his wife Penelope, he still entered into a love affair with Calypso, which explains the heartfelt farewell in Tischbein's painting. The work is housed in a richly carved contemporary frame reminiscent of those of Johann August Nahl (1710-1785), with whom Tischbein was befriended.