Homer, whose lifetime is assumed to be around 800 BC, is considered the founder of European literary history with his great epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. However, it is still questionable today whether there actually was a historical person of this name. Likewise, it is assumed by researchers that the two epics were not created by one and the same poet. But the tales handed down in the Iliad and Odyssey were so present in antiquity that the 'author' Homer was accorded great veneration and people - literally - made an image of him.
Portraits known as Homer have been known since the 5th century BC. They show typified representations of a poet with a bandage of hair and closed eyes. As fictitious portraits, they are an expression of the respective ideas of appearance and style of their time of origin.
The model for this Homer portrait is to be found in the bust of the so-called Hellenistic blind type. The main representative of this type of portrait is the bust from the Farnese Collection in Naples. This is a Roman copy of the 2nd century AD after an original of late Hellenism from the time of the 2nd century BC (AVS).
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