Aeneas and his crew are ashore at Caieta (Gaeta), midway between Naples and Rome, where two of the survivors of Ulysses’ crew meet to tell stories from Homer’s Odyssey. Following Achaemenides’ account of their encounter with Polyphemus, he hands over to Macareus to tell of their transformation by the sorceress Circe.

Macareus starts with Aeolus and the bag of winds he gave to Ulysses. For nine days, they experienced favourable winds, but on the tenth the crew opened the bag looking for riches. In doing so they released the winds, which promptly blew the ship back to Aeolus. Then there were the cannibal Laestrygonians, who ate one of the three crew sent to meet them. Their chieftain led a party in pursuit of Ulysses, bombarding his ships with trees and rocks and sinking two of the three. The third ship containing Ulysses, Macareus and others escaped to safety.

They sailed on to Circe’s island, where the surviving crew refused to go beyond its beach. Lots were drawn to form a group to go to Circe’s palace, and they set off. On the way they came across enchanted animals, lions, bears and wolves, which rushed at them but didn’t attack.

Dosso Dossi’s Circe and her Lovers in a Landscape (c 1514-16) is a remarkably early and realistic mythological landscape, with deep rustic lanes, trees, and a distant farmhouse. Circe leans, naked, at the foot of a tree going through spells on a large tablet, with a book of magic open at her feet. Around her are some of the men whom she took a fancy to and transformed into wild creatures. There’s a spoonbill, a small deer, a couple of dogs, a stag, and up in the trees an owl and what could well be a woodpecker, in the upper right corner.

Macareus and his party were taken in to see Circe sat on her throne, busy making a herbal concoction that she had served to them in a barley drink. When she touched their heads with her wand they were all transformed into pigs, apart from Eurylochus, who had refused to drink. He returned to Ulysses and warned him of what had happened to his colleagues.

Briton Rivière’s painting of Circe and her Swine (before 1896) has been used as an illustration for several versions of the Odyssey, and unusually casts Circe as a magic swineherd, with her wand resting behind her.

Alice Pike Barney’s painterly portrait of Circe from about 1915 was most probably made in pastels. Her streaming golden hair almost fills the painting, and wraps the head of the large boar she is embracing.

Ulysses brought Circe a flower he had been given by Mercury, and she took him into her hall, where she tried to lure him to drink her concoction. Ulysses drew his sword, forcing her to back off.

Jan van Bijlert’s Ulysses and Circe from around 1640 shows the couple at the banquet, looking intently at one another. Circe holds her wand, and between them is a goblet containing her magic concoction. At the right, one of the serving maids looks directly at the viewer. At her heels are Ulysses’ crew, in the form of pigs.

Salomon de Bray makes this a more intimate meeting, in his Odysseus and Circe (1650-55). Ulysses is seated clutching a krater-like goblet into which a maid is pouring clear liquid from a bottle. The hero looks quite haggard, and decidedly unimpressed by Circe. Below Ulysses’ left arm, two pigs are drinking more of Circe’s concoction.

Giovanni Andrea Sirani, father and teacher of the great Elisabetta Sirani, painted his account of Ulysses and Circe at about the same time as de Bray, and advances the story a few moments to the point where Ulysses is about to draw his sword. Here Circe is still holding the glass she is trying to get him to drink, with her wand in the other hand. The crew are seen in the background, in the form of pigs. Another woman holding a wand is with them: this could represent their transformation into pigs, or back into humans, so forming multiplex narrative.

The last of the paintings from this period of popularity is Matthijs Naiveu’s Circe and Odysseus from 1702. This is set in a grand banquet inside Circe’s palace, with some peculiar clusters of figures alluding to her role as a sorceress. For example, there’s a table just to the left of the couple at which a satyr and a demon are engaged in conversation. Circe has moved forward from her throne to embrace Ulysses, whose sword is pointing at her body to force her back. The goblet from which she has been trying to get him to drink is held by a maid at the far right. A couple of boars are feeding from fruit laid on the marble floor.

John William Waterhouse’s Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus from 1891 is perhaps the most complex work showing this story. Circe sits on her throne, holding up the krater for Ulysses to drink, with her wand in the other hand. The viewer is Ulysses, seen in the large circular mirror behind the sorceress, preparing to draw his sword. On the left side of the mirror is his ship, and scattered on the ground at Circe’s feet are the herbs and berries she used to prepare the concoction to transform the crew. To the right, one of those pigs lies on the ground, behind a small incense burner.

Ulysses and Circe then married, and she took him off to her bed. As a wedding gift to him, she transformed his crew back into human form, to their great relief. They remained on Circe’s island for a whole year before resuming their journey.

Now debased by hyperbole and its association with drugs, ecstasy was intended to denote a trance-like state normally attained in two contrasting contexts: religion, and physical pleasure. This week I show how artists have depicted this intense emotional experience, starting today with paintings of Christian religious ecstasy.

This is a state most widely attributed to followers of Jesus Christ, particularly Mary Magdalene, and in paintings appears in the Renaissance when facial expression and body language became acceptable in art. Mary Magdalene is the subject of a tangle of legends, most of them the result of conflation, and many of them bizarre or outlandish. Paintings of her in religious ecstasy appear to have arisen from her penitence and mourning.

Elisabetta Sirani’s Penitent Magdalene is a powerful painting in which Mary’s eyes are closed in an understated ecstasy, despite the vision of Christ crucified on the left.

In Artemisia Gentileschi’s portrait of Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy from 1613-20, her mouth and eyes are closed and her head thrown back as she directs her unseeing gaze to heaven.

The story of the conversion of Saul into Saint Paul does at least have a textual basis in the Acts of the Apostles, but the received account proved a difficult compositional problem in visual art.

Domenico Morelli’s Conversion of Saint Paul from 1876 tries a novel solution, and is perhaps the most successful. Accepting the contradictory demands, he puts Paul in a brilliant light, showing its origin in the heavens, but has him face away from it. Now blinded by that light, Paul looks with unseeing eyes of revelatory ecstasy towards the viewer, his right arm and hand outstretched.

The life of Saint Cecilia is almost unknown, and she isn’t reputed to have undergone any notable ecstasy. However, that didn’t stop the event from being celebrated in paint.

Raphael’s Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia, painted between 1513-14, is one of his masterpieces, and probably secured the popularity of Saint Cecilia as the patron saint of music and musicians. Beside her are, from the left, Saints Paul, John the Evangelist (patron saint of the church for which this painting was destined), Augustine, who holds a crosier, and Mary Magdalene. Signs of her ecstasy are limited.

Andrés de la Concha’s later painting of Saint Cecilia from 1570-1610 shows her in more obvious ecstasy, and playing a substantial pipe organ, with angelic instrumentalists in the clouds above.

After Mary Magdalene, the best-known Christian religious figure who has been painted in ecstasy is Joan of Arc.

Léon-François Bénouville’s Joan of Arc Hearing Voices, probably from around 1850, is a composite of different episodes from her visions and life: Joan is clearly older than thirteen, and isn’t in her father’s garden, but apparently spinning while tending his sheep. In the distance, a town is burning, referring either to the war being waged by the English, or one of the actions in which Joan became involved. Instead of her eyes being closed, they’re wide open, and her arms tensed against her lower leg.

It’s Annie Louisa Swynnerton’s undated portrait of Joan of Arc that captures her in fullest ecstasy, with a rainbow behind her.

When the French Naturalist Luc-Olivier Merson was in Italy, he concentrated on religious and historical paintings, some of which are almost phantasmagoric in content. The Vision from 1872 combines an altered image of the Crucifixion with that of a nun in an apparent ecstasy, and an angelic musical trio. It’s strongly suggestive of the much later paintings of Surrealists, particularly those of Salvador Dalí (1904-1989).