Homer’s Odyssey relates how Odysseus and his men, during their wanderings after the Trojan War, landed on the island of the sorceress Circe, who transformed the men into animals. Framed by a decaying niche and with a pile of magical volumes before her, Circe gazes with an air of melancholy at the beasts, their discarded armour in the foreground. The acid-bite of the etching plate was unusually successful, and the print has a remarkable luminosity.