Ulysses recognized by his nurse on his return from Troy

1848 was the year the streets of Paris rose, toppled a king, and declared a Second Republic. Bouguereau, 23 and newly arrived from the provinces, spent it looking backward, deep in Homer. The scene is the moment in the Odyssey when Odysseus, home from Troy after 20 years and disguised as a beggar, is bathed by his old nurse Eurycleia, who feels the long scar on his leg and knows him at once. Bouguereau gives her the whole weight of the picture, kneeling, her hand on his knee, her face turned up to his. He was already committed to the polished classical manner the coming century would fight over. The painting now hangs in La Rochelle, the Atlantic port where he grew up.