This sculpture presents a scene from the Life of Homer, a text once thought to be the work of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. The blind Homer, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, has been abandoned by fishermen on a Greek island, where he is attacked by dogs guarding a herd of goats. The goatherd Glaucus comes to the rescue, fighting them off. This choice of subject matter and the sculpture’s style reflect Clodion’s late-career shift from the lighthearted ornament of Rococo toward Neoclassicism, an artistic movement inspired by ancient Greece and Rome. 

While scholars disagree about Homer’s biographical details (and even whether there was a single author called Homer responsible for the two epic poems), ancient accounts of Homer generally describe him as blind. In Greek mythology, blindness is often a marker of prophetic insight. The ability to perceive truths beyond ordinary vision makes sense, then, as an attribute of the figure imagined to be the author of stories that have captivated audiences for millennia. 

Claude Michel, called Clodion (1738–1814), The Blind Homer. Bronze, 1810. 23 1/8 x 16 13/16 x 10 7/8 in. (58.7 x 42.7 x 27.6 cm). Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1976.2. On view in Gallery 26.