The Odyssey, Condensed: Penelope and Her Suitors

Tell me, O Muse, about a complicated painting.

This week sees the release of another movie interpreting Homer‘s Odyssey, the latest installment in a thousands-years-long history of retelling and translating the epic story of Odysseus‘s journey home.

Five hundred years ago, the Italian Renaissance painter Pinturicchio contributed his own interpretation of the Odyssey. He crafted a complicated composition that condenses the epic story, focusing especially on Penelope’s own craftiness, pun intended, to protect her (husband’s) honor. It was one of the first paintings I studied in graduate school long ago, and I am fascinated by the many framing devices that Pinturicchio used: formal framing, continuous narration (see this post for a definition), linear perspective*, atmospheric perspective*; and how he squeezed episodes past, present, and future of an epic into a single painting. You could spend as long as the length of a Hollywood blockbuster looking at this painting and still find more to discover.

Bernardino Pinturicchio (also Pintoricchio—a nickname meaning “little painter”), Penelope with the Suitors, c. 1509. Fresco detached and transferred to canvas, 125 x 152 cm. Originally from Palazzo Magnifico, Siena. National Gallery, London

Let’s take a closer look! (Brighten your screen, otherwise the muted colors of the fresco will seem overly dull.) The painting shows Penelope actively weaving at a large loom, as several suitors approach. In Homer’s story, Penelope has been waiting for her husband Odysseus, who has been gone for twenty years: the first ten fighting the Trojan War, the next ten in a torturous journey trying to return. Meanwhile, scores of suitors have been trying to convince Penelope that Odysseus surely must be dead by now, and are demanding that she choose one of them to marry.

Odysseus is famous for being a man who tricks his way out of dangerous situations, and Penelope is his equal in cleverness. She feigns defeat by telling the suitors that she will finally choose one of them—after she is done weaving a shroud for her father-in-law. But every night, she secretly unravels her day’s work.

The suitors have never done any weaving. They cannot comprehend the ins and outs of creating textiles, since this is women’s work, so they have no idea how long it takes to weave such a garment. Although they have disregarded the Greek laws of hospitality by overstaying their welcome, they have respect enough for the mysterious and holy act of weaving a shroud for a dead man (man being key, but I guess he was their former king), so they acquiesce.

Pinturicchio shows the characters in fancy attire from the late 15th century, reflecting the appearance of his aristocratic patrons in Renaissance Siena. Penelope wears blue and a headscarf almost like a Madonna, showing how pure and modest she is in her industry and chaste patience. A maid below her sits on the floor, defining the corner of the painting, winding balls of thread onto a spindle. She’s shown smaller and therefore both younger and less important.

The men rush in, their hands in clear gestures, which would show a Renaissance viewer that they are all talking. Pinturicchio had fun giving them a variety of fine outfits, showing they’re from different places to represent more suitors than can be pictured here. Their outfits showcase their wealth, status, and power. (With the exception of the guy in the back in seafoam green. He was probably recycled from a crucifixion scene as he gazes incongruously upward—just an “extra” as if this were a movie.) One of the suitors holds a falcon on his white gloved hand, showing that he is hunting—in this case, for a bride. Falcon-man’s outfit is made out of iridescent shot-silk, as though woven with two contrasting colors—in Renaissance painting this is called cangiantismo (can-jan-TIZ-mo). We can especially admire the foremost fellow’s long golden ringlets, his ostentatiously ribbony belt, and his checkered fancy pants and codpiece.

The checkerboard pattern rhymes with the tiled floor, a common device in quattrocento painting to emphasize the use of one-point perspective. The huge frame of the loom, almost the size of the whole room, does the same thing. The lines of the loom-frame and the floor point out the window to the back, reminding us to look deep into the painting and see what’s out there.

Just like Penelope’s shuttle, which carries the warp-thread through the weft-threads on the loom, our eyes travel back and return through Pinturicchio’s composition, to take in the past, present, and hinted future of the narrative. In the background, Pinturicchio uses continuous narration in order to squeeze in several key moments taken from Homer’s tale. The ship, painted exuberantly with lots of details and billowing sails, shows Odysseus bound to the mast so that he will not heed the song of the Sirens (here shown as melusine or twin-tailed mermaids, you know, like the Starbucks logo). Other sailors clap their hands over their ears so they won’t hear, as in a small skiff where an unfortunate man throws himself overboard towards the Sirens.

On the island, the sorceress Circe gives Odysseus a gesture of welcome while lions and other wild animals—perhaps also some of the men she turned into pigs—mill about their feet. One of the several castles Odysseus visits is in the middle ground, and another ship in the far background sails with oars out, which could be early in the story, perhaps showing Odysseus’ crew leaving the shores of Troy or escaping from the island of the cyclops Polyphemus (not shown).

These seascape scenes comprise such an elaborate (and not-to-scale-nor-in-proper-perspective) image-within-an-image, that it suggests the ships and islands and sea and sky are not a window out of Penelope’s room but a painting within it. After all, this entire painting was originally one of eight frescos decorating a room in a palace in Siena. Each scene was like a window into the ancient world with which the scholars of the Renaissance were so fascinated. Even better, we could imagine it to be a tapestry that Penelope could be weaving, as though she is illustrating the narrative of her long-missing husband. Still, there is that charming detail of a black starling (or grackle?) walking on the frame of the loom—as though the bird has just flown into the room from the fictive window. That’s Pinturicchian humor for you!

Another animal (and humorous moment) in the room is the winsome gray cat on the floor, who plays with the ball of string, suggesting that Penelope is toying with her suitors and getting the best of them. But look how its ears are turning. It could be annoyed at the blustery men, a signal that we are not supposed to like them either, despite their elegant attire.

Or, it could have just caught the sound of the door opening. There, framed in the doorway—and from Penelope’s seat, by her loom-frame, to discover when she raises her eyes—is a bearded fellow, shown as though lifting a hood and carrying a traveler’s staff. It’s Odysseus! Recognized here not by his faithful dog Argus but by a cat? Let me know in the comments if you think that’s a stretch, or maybe Pinturicchio is just having Penelope be a cat lady, the independent type that follows her own cleverness and wouldn’t give in to the suitors’ threats.

Pinturicchio shows Odysseus looking across the room, towards Penelope but equally to the majestic bow and quiver hanging nailed to the loom frame above her head. Pinturiccio is alluding to the future end of the suitors, as Odysseus will soon slay them all by bow and arrow.

So much is happening simultaneously in this painting! The eight fresco scenes made for the palace in Siena had a theme of virtue in marriage, as the room was commissioned on the occasion of a wedding. Consequently, Pinturicchio’s focus on Penelope as a virtuous woman waiting patiently for the return of her husband and rebuffing her suitors makes sense. But the complexity of the painting, the cat, and the prominence of the loom, showcase Penelope’s intellectual liveliness as another virtue: she uses her crafty mind and her crafting hands to trick the suitors, utilizing gendered roles to hold them at bay.

This cleverness reflects well on the artist Pinturicchio, too.

*linear perspective: when parallel lines within the painting converge at a single point to approximate a representation of three dimensional space

*atmospheric perspective: where the mountains in the distance get hazy and blue from scattered light, showing they are far away in the landscape

FURTHER READING:

*High Recommends for Circe by Madeline Miller and The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, and the recent translation by Emily Wilson of the Odyssey, which begins “Tell me about a complicated man/ Muse.” I adopted that language for my opening.