Nausicaa

Nausicaa, painted in 1878, depicts the Phaeacian princess from Homer's Odyssey who discovers the shipwrecked Odysseus on the shore of her island and helps him reach her father's court. For Leighton, Nausicaa embodied the particular combination of virtuous innocence, athletic grace, and classical beauty that he habitually sought in female subjects from Greek mythology. The subject had attracted painters since the Renaissance, but Leighton's version reflects the specifically Victorian engagement with Homer renewed by the publication of Matthew Arnold's essay on the function of criticism and the wave of scholarly and literary interest in the Greek world that characterised intellectual life in the 1860s and 1870s. By 1878 Leighton was at the height of his powers and his reputation, having been elected President of the Royal Academy the previous year. Nausicaa represents his mature mythological manner: serene, classically idealised, and bathed in warm Aegean light that his travel studies had taught him to represent with confidence and accuracy.

The figure of Nausicaa is rendered with Leighton's characteristic sculptural modelling, the body clearly understood beneath loose drapery. The Aegean setting is established through his now-confident handling of Greek light and water. The drapery folds are arranged with conscious reference to ancient Greek vase painting and sculpture, reinforcing the classical authority of the image.