Aeneas has just returned from visiting his father’s spirit in the underworld, with the Sibyl of Cumae as his guide. Ovid then uses two of Ulysses’ men to relate episodes from Homer’s Odyssey in flashback. The first is Achaemenides, who survived an encounter with Polyphemus.

Aeneas sails on from Cumae and lands on the coast at Caieta (Gaeta), midway between Naples and Rome. When they’re ashore, Achaemenides, whom Aeneas had rescued from Sicily, comes across Macareus, another survivor of Ulysses’ crew who had returned from the Trojan War. Their meeting prompts Achaemenides to give a brief account of the encounter between the Cyclops Polyphemus and Ulysses (Odysseus) and his men, a story familiar to the Roman reader from its fuller version in Homer’s Odyssey.

Polyphemus, a savage one-eyed man-eating giant, spent his days tending his flock of sheep. Polyphemus held Ulysses and his crew captive, then devoured several of them, so Ulysses got the Cyclops drunk in order to engineer their escape. Polyphemus asked Ulysses his name, and the latter replied Οὖτις (Outis, Greek for nobody). Once the giant had fallen into a stupor, Ulysses drove a hardened stake into the Cyclops’ one eye, blinding him.

The following morning, Ulysses and his men tied themselves to the undersides of the sheep in Polyphemus’ flock so that he couldn’t feel them escaping. Recognising he had lost his captives, Polyphemus called out for help from the other Cyclops, telling them that ‘Nobody’ had hurt him. The other Cyclops therefore didn’t come to his aid.

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg’s Ulysses Fleeing the Cave of Polyphemus (1812) shows Ulysses about to make his way out of the Cyclops’ cave, as his captor strokes one of his sheep. With Polyphemus’ face turned away from the viewer, it’s difficult to confirm that he has been blinded at this stage, though.

Jacob Jordaens pictures the crew fastening themselves to the underside of the sheep as they prepare to escape, in his Odysseus in the Cave of Polyphemus, probably painted in about 1650. Again, the Cyclops is facing away from the viewer, and it’s hard to be sure that this is taking place after his blinding.

Achaemenides became separated from the main group, who made their way down to the ship and sailed off into the dawn, deriding the blind Polyphemus as they went. Achaemenides was thus able to see Polyphemus fly into a rage, and hurl huge rocks at Ulysses in his ship.

Guido Reni’s account in his Polyphemus from 1639-40 is clearer. The Cyclopean eye socket is now empty, where Ulysses had poked its single eye out. In the distance, the hero and his crew are making their way out to their ships in two smaller boats, in their haste to depart.

Arnold Böcklin’s Odysseus and Polyphemus (1896) shows Ulysses’ crew rowing frantically out to sea, through large waves, as Polyphemus prepares to hurl a huge rock at them from the shore. The detailed realism and tight composition make this one of Böcklin’s most dramatic and active paintings, and a vivid account.

JMW Turner’s magnificent Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus is probably his finest narrative painting, and the product of a long gestation. He seems to have started work on rough sketches for this in a sketchbook thought to date to 1807, and this finished painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy over twenty years later, in 1829.

The massive figure of Polyphemus is wreathed in cloud above the wooded coast towards the upper left, as the rays of the rising sun light the whole scene from Apollo’s chariot.

The entire crew is dressing the masts and rigging, and Ulysses brandishes two large flags, to deride the blinded giant. The orange flag on the mainmast bears the Greek letters Οὖτις (Outis), the name that Ulysses told Polyphemus was his. Below it is another flag showing the wooden horse of Troy, a reference to Virgil’s Aeneid. In front of the bows of the ship are ghostly white Nereids and sea creatures, presumably a reference to Neptune, Polyphemus’ father, whose curse results from this incident.

The Cyclops then strode the slopes of Mount Etna in his rage, cursing Greeks in general and Ulysses in particular. Achaemenides felt certain that Polyphemus would discover him, and that he would suffer the same fate as his colleagues who had been eaten alive. He hid himself and lived on grass and acorns until he spotted Aeneas’ ship, and he became a Greek rescued by a Trojan ship.

Facial expressions are a rich source of information about our emotions, state of mind, and when we are in pain. While heroes always grin and bear it, and sometimes the most unlikely person appears remarkably stoical, the grimace of pain is an important feature in some narrative paintings. In some this has become so uniform as to become a stereotype.

In Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes from about 1598-9, he tells most of this story in facial expressions alone. Judith’s combines anxiety with repulsion, revealing her ambivalence in killing her victim, while the expression of her aged maid is even stronger in its grim determination. Holofernes’ face is grimaced in shocked agony, just as death is freezing it in place, and his arms show a futile effort to press himself up from his bed. The artist is believed to have used a Roman courtesan, Fillide Melandroni, as the model, and to have recalled what he had seen earlier at the public execution of Beatrice Cenci.

Jacob Jordaens’ Prometheus Bound from about 1640, features an almost identical expression on the face of Prometheus as an eagle feeds from his liver.

Later rottenpockets in Dante’s Inferno contain thieves, those who gave fraudulent counsel, those who sowed discord, and falsifiers and imposters of various kinds. In Joseph Anton Koch’s fresco in the Casa Massimo, Rome, thieves are attacked repeatedly by snakes and grimace in their agony.

This expression continued well into nineteenth century history painting, in Jules-Élie Delaunay’s Ixion Plunged into Hades from 1876. This shows Ixion writhing in agony in the Underworld, as he is bound to a wheel by snakes, his expression still conforming to Caravaggio’s Holofernes.

In Arnold Böcklin’s puzzling painting from 1898, Nessus the centaur is far from part-human, and Deianeira isn’t the beauty she was claimed to be. As those two wrestle grimly, Hercules has stolen up behind them, and is busy pushing a spear into Nessus’ bulging belly. Blood pours from the wound, and the centaur’s face has the same open mouth grimace of pain, now a full three centuries since Caravaggio.

Some still found scope for more studied and original expressions of pain.

Rembrandt’s early painting of The Operation, from his late teens in 1624-25, shows a barber-surgeon and his assistant performing surgery on the side of a man’s head. This is most likely to have been the lancing of a boil or removal of a tumour from the scalp or pinna of the ear. In the absence of any form of anaesthesia, this visibly resulted in considerable pain for the long-suffering patient, whose eyes and mouth are closed, and his arms are tensed with fists clenched.

Jan Steen’s The Village School (c 1665) shows physical punishment in a contemporary school. The child at the right holds out a hand for teacher to strike it with a wooden spoon, as he is already wiping tears from his eyes. A girl in the middle of the canvas is grimacing in sympathy.

I finish with two animal curiosities.

A Courtesan Pulling the Ear of a Cat, Allegory of the Sense of Touch was painted in Jan van Bijlert’s workshop around 1625-70, and is clearly composed on the theme of touch. A florid courtesan plays with her cat, pulling its ear, resulting in its grimace of pain and anger.

Exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1878, August Friedrich Schenk’s Anguish, painted in 1876-78, shows a ewe lamenting the death of her lamb in the snow, as a thoroughly menacing murder of crows assembles around the defiant mother. Although the ewe’s face isn’t contorted, her open mouth and visible breath cries pain and anguish.