Portrait of the Poet Homer

The old man honored by a laurel wreath is Homer, the greatest poet of antiquity, identified by the inscription on the sheet of paper with the names of the cities that claimed Homer as a native. This imaginary portrait (no one knows what he looked like) is not so much a celebration of the author of the early Greek epic poems- The Iliad and The Odyssey- but of the fame that a poet could achieve. This splendid painting is dated but not signed. The forceful modeling suggests a Flemish painter influenced by Caravaggio (Italian, 1571-1610).