From about 1556 to 1559 assistants following Primaticcio’s drawings painted the gallery’s walls with fifty-eight episodes from the Odyssey. Primaticcio’s masterpiece was the palace’s 500 foot-long Gallery of Ulysses, tragically demolished in 1738 because its structure had decayed. The grace and refinement of his designs defined the official style, and his art became an exemplar for later generations of French artists.

In the “universal workshop” at Fontainebleau, which adapted Italian Mannerism to French taste, Italian artist Francesco Primaticcio became the dominant artistic personality. There, François I (ruled 1494-1547) and his successors achieved a setting that became the cultural focus of sixteenth-century France, and whose magnificence and intellectual glamour made this court the envy of Europe. This haunting depiction of their reunion is remarkable for its touching humanity, expressed in the supremely elegant court style of the palace of Fontainebleau, outside Paris. Near the end of the Greek epic the Odyssey, Homer relates how Odysseus (Ulysses to the Romans), after years of tribulations, returned at last to the arms of his patient wife, Penelope, the two recounting far into the night all that had befallen them. Likewise, they rejected the symmetry and clearly defined spaces of Renaissance painting for compressed spaces, jarring colors, and a feeling of instability. Mannerists valued artistic invention over the imitation of nature, often twisting and elongating the human form to make it look more elegant (see also Salviati in this gallery). Ulysses and Penelope is an extraordinary example of a style now called Mannerism, which followed the period of the High Renaissance from about 1520–1600. Unfortunately, the Gallery of Ulysses, Primaticcio’s masterpiece, was destroyed in 1738 after years of decay. The composition is based on one of 58 wall frescos of scenes from Homer’s Odyssey at the palace of Fontainebleau near Paris. While Penelope lists the suitors she held at bay, Ulysses lovingly cradles her chin in a gesture of compassion and affection. The lovers recount their adventures to one another deep into the night. Greek hero Odysseus (Ulysses) has finally returned home to his wife, the faithful Penelope, after battling the Trojans and enduring years of subsequent troubles. Painting: Oil on canvas, 113.6 x 123.8 cm.

Penelope odyssey paintings