Erich Lessing

After ten years of fighting at Troy and ten years of wandering, the Greek warrior Odysseus returns home to his wife, Penelope. So altered by his travels that his wife and family no longer recognize him, the king of Ithaca first approaches Penelope in the guise of an elderly beggar, dressed in rags. Their moving reunion is depicted here in a fifth-century B.C.E. terracotta relief, now in the Louvre.