Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses (section)

This is Circe, the enchantress from Homer's Odyssey, caught in the moment she offers a poisoned cup to Ulysses. In one hand she raises the golden goblet, in the other a wand ready to transform him into a pig, the fate she already dealt to his crew. Look at the mirror behind her throne. It reflects the small figure of Ulysses himself, sword drawn, approaching from the shadows. John William Waterhouse painted this in 1891, and he gives Circe a fierce confidence, seated on a lion carved throne with her arms flung wide like a queen who fears nothing.

Waterhouse was a British painter working in a late Pre-Raphaelite style, drawn again and again to women from myth and legend. He loved subjects like this one, powerful and a little dangerous, painted with rich color and dramatic staging. In the actual story Ulysses outwits her thanks to a magic herb from the god Hermes, forcing Circe to spare his men. She then becomes his ally and lover, so this tense standoff is really the start of a much stranger friendship.