Homer

Homer Homer is a Greek poet who lived in the 8th century BC, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nothing is known about his life; his appearance was never documented. The marble bust kept in Łańcut is a copy of an antique Roman marble herma from the collection of the British Museum in London, made according to a Greek sculpture probably from the 2nd century BC. It is an imaginary portrait, from the Hellenistic period, belonging to the type of portraits of Homer depicting him as a blind man (cf. bust of Homer, inv. no. S. 2192 MŁ). Homer is presented as an old, balding man with sunken cheeks and wrinkles, small, smooth eyeballs in sunken eye sockets under high, drooping eyebrow arches. The narrow lips are parted. The strands of his beard, curled in a wavy way, reach his cheeks. The hair falling from underneath the headband forms a compact mass of plastically worked serpentine locks arranged in various directions near the face. The author of the bust of Homer kept in Łańcut is unknown; it was created at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. It has been in the collection of the Łańcut castle since 1948, when it was taken over by the museum from the Museum Repository in Przeworsk established in the Lubomirski Palace, nationalised in 1944, and including the local art collection. It is now exhibited in the Sculpture Gallery. Barbara Trojnar