The Adventures of Ulysses

Apollonio di Giovanni · 1435–45

Medium

Tempera on panel

Original size

42 × 131.7 cm (16 3/4 × 51 7/8 in.); Framed: 53.3 × 142.2 cm (21 × 56 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

A vivid retelling of Homer's epic, this small-scale panel crackles with the energy of a narrative tradition that Renaissance Florence could not get enough of. Apollonio di Giovanni ran one of the most prolific cassone workshops in fifteenth-century Florence, producing painted chests that decorated the bedchambers of wealthy merchant families. Working in egg tempera on panel, he developed a style that compresses sweeping stories — battles, sea voyages, mythological encounters — into densely packed scenes filled with jewel-bright figures and ships that look ready to sail off the edge of the wood. His workshop's illustrations of Virgil and Homer were so recognisable that the humanist poet Ugolino Verino nicknamed him the "Florentine Apelles," comparing him to the most celebrated painter of antiquity. The Adventures of Ulysses is one of a group of panels depicting Homeric subjects that survive from his shop, testament to how deeply classical literature had worked its way into domestic Florentine life by the mid-quattrocento. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates Apollonio's compressed storytelling and luminous palette into a medium that carries the same warmth and depth, giving a work made for a private chest the presence it deserves on a wall.