This work has been studied and authenticated by Professor Hermann Mildenberger.

The Odysseus portrait, known via a lithography contained in Tischbein's book titled Homer as drawn by the Ancients,often recurs in the artist's paintings, even beyond the series devoted to Homer. On an aesthetic level, the chalk's hatched line recalls the lithography of the “Homer” series; this sheet is not, however, a sketch but rather a drawing that possesses the aesthetic characteristics of a lithography with its own chromatic scheme.

Many compositions from the “Homer” series were used by Tischbein's pupils as tools for their training: for example, the “Odysseus” copied by the Nazarene Friedrich Overbeck[i].

  In the Klassik Stiftung in Weimar there is a series of eight “Heads of Homeric Heroes” which Goethe saw in 1801 in the house of Heyne, the scholar of the first part of the “Homer” cycle. In this collection of colour exemplars there was also a version of the head of Odysseus which was separated out in the nineteenth century. The format of the removed copy is quite different from this version[ii].

  Again in Weimar, in the legacy of Johann Heinrich Meyer, there is a volume with Tischbein's drawings which include another version of “Odysseus”.