Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Nausicaa.
The gallery
Odysseus and Nausicaa
Pieter Lastman, 1619
Lastman's Munich canvas freezes Odyssey 6 at the river mouth: the shipwrecked Odysseus kneels before Nausicaa while her startled handmaids scatter. The Phaeacian princess stands as the civilised welcome that will send the wanderer home.
Coastal Landscape with Ulysses and Nausicaa
Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1625–1627
Rubens sets the meeting on a windy Phaeacian shore — Odysseus emerging from the brush, Nausicaa and her train with the laundry carts Homer names. The Palazzo Pitti panel turns hospitality into a Baroque coastal drama.
Ulysses and Nausicaa
Michele Desubleo, 1654
Desubleo's Bolognese oil gathers Nausicaa and her companions around the half-naked stranger — the Homeric ball game interrupted by awe. The princess's calm gesture steadies the scene as Athena's plan unfolds.
Odysseus and Nausicaa
Friedrich Preller the Elder, 1864
Preller the Elder's history painting renders the Odyssean threshold: brine-caked Odysseus supplicates the composed Phaeacian princess while her maids flee. Neoclassical balance makes Nausicaa the face of civilised welcome.
On screen
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Hayao Miyazaki
Miyazaki borrowed the Homeric princess's name for his wind-riding heroine — Nausicaa reborn as ecological saviour in a poisoned future.
Ulysses
Mario Camerini
Rossana Podestà's Nausicaa finds the amnesiac stranger on the Phaeacian shore — laundry, almost-marriage, and the memory that sends him home.
The Odyssey
Andrei Konchalovsky
Katie Carr's Nausicaa recovers the shipwrecked king among her handmaidens — the civilised welcome that secretly lands him on Ithaca.
In music & on stage
In play
Homer's Daughter
Robert Graves
Graves invents a Sicilian princess who is Nausicaa — and argues she wrote the Odyssey to save her house from suitors.
Nausicaa
Nausicaa remains the type of the generous princess at the water's edge — the Odyssey's most graceful host, forever almost a bride.