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Undergraduate
Classics Teaching Collections |
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| Name: |
Bust
of Blind Homer |
| Picture: |
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| Description: |
London,
British Museum; other copies in Paris, Louvre, and MOFA, Boston. H.
0.41m. Bust of Homer as envisaged by Hellenistic sculptors. The poet
is an ascetic, haggard, with deep lines etched into his face. His
nose is the focal point of the bust, long and enormous. His brows
cast deep shadows over the sightless eyes below. His beard and hair
is tangled and unkempt. Around his head is a fillet, which keeps the
hair on the crown of his head tidy, but framing the face it falls
in a riot, tumbling over the ears and cheekbones. |
| Date: |
200-150 B.C. |
| Discussion: |
It was
a typical Hellenistic practice to 'invent' portraits of long-dead
poets and philosophers. Homer had been depicted several times before,
but this is perhaps the best 'portrait', in Hellenistic baroque style,
the poet as visionary. See Pollitt 1986: 119-20, fig. 122; Stewart
1990: 217, 223; 801 (ill. of copy in the Louvre). |
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