Name:	Bust of Blind Homer
Picture:
Description:	London, British Museum; other copies in Paris, Louvre, and MOFA, Boston. H. 0.41m. Bust of Homer as envisaged by Hellenistic sculptors. The poet is an ascetic, haggard, with deep lines etched into his face. His nose is the focal point of the bust, long and enormous. His brows cast deep shadows over the sightless eyes below. His beard and hair is tangled and unkempt. Around his head is a fillet, which keeps the hair on the crown of his head tidy, but framing the face it falls in a riot, tumbling over the ears and cheekbones.
Date:	200-150 B.C.
Discussion:	It was a typical Hellenistic practice to 'invent' portraits of long-dead poets and philosophers. Homer had been depicted several times before, but this is perhaps the best 'portrait', in Hellenistic baroque style, the poet as visionary. See Pollitt 1986: 119-20, fig. 122; Stewart 1990: 217, 223; 801 (ill. of copy in the Louvre).