Odysseus and Polyphemus

The giant hurling a boulder from the rocks is Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops from Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus and his men had been trapped in the monster's cave, and after blinding him to escape, they raced for their ship. Böcklin catches the exact moment of the Cyclops' revenge: he has torn a huge rock loose and is about to fling it at the fleeing boat, hoping to smash it and drown the men who tricked him. You can see Odysseus standing tall in the stern, wrapped in red, shaking his fist back at the enemy he outwitted.

Böcklin, a Swiss painter working in the late 1800s, loved subjects drawn from myth and the sea, often with a dark or ominous edge. He painted this in 1896, and the churning green waves do most of the storytelling here. The boat tilts on the swell, the oars strain, and white foam explodes against the rocks. It is a scene built on tension, that split second before the boulder falls and the outcome hangs in the balance.