The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis

In Fénelon’s novel Les Aventures de Télémaque of 1699, loosely based on characters from the Odyssey, Telemachus, son of Odysseus, falls passionately in love with the nymph Eucharis during his sojourn on Calypso’s island, but his duty as a son requires him to end the romance and sail on in search of his missing father. Jacques-Louis David painted the ill-fated lovers’ farewell in a grotto in 1818, during his final years of exile in Brussels: the fair-haired Telemachus fixes Eucharis with a dreamy gaze, grasping her thigh with one hand while holding his spear upright with the other. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.