Penelope weeping over Ulysses's bow

This poignant copper by Angelica Kauffman is a recent rediscovery, having passed by descent in a private English collection for at least around 150 years. The artist's small, single-figure history and allegory subjects, often painted on copper ovals, were much in demand during her lifetime, with many reproduced and circulated as engravings. The Odyssey was a fruitful source of subject matter; she painted more than a dozen scenes from Homer's epic and revisited many of them on subsequent occasions. Here Kauffman depicts Penelope weeping over her husband Ulysses's bow during his twenty-year absence, fighting in the Trojan War. Its pendant scene shows the nymph Calypso, who held Ulysses captive for seven years on the island of Ogygia, during which he longed to return to Penelope. The theme of abandoned, melancholic women was clearly meaningful to Kauffman, whether her heroine was mythological, allegorical or literary, and here she evokes the moment of Calypso's heartbreak with her characteristically fluid brushwork and delicate colour palette.