Pinturicchio
This fresco was one of eight decorating the palace of Pandolfo Petrucci, ruler of Siena (only three of them survive). Petrucci commissioned them to mark his son's marriage to Pope Pius III's niece.
The scene depicts an episode from Homer's Odyssey: Penelope is at her loom, faithfully awaiting Odysseus's return while suitors, shown queuing for her attention, pursue her. She vowed to remarry only after her weaving was finished; then she secretly unpicked it each night. The central figure raising his finger (possibly her son Telemachus) seems to address her, surrounded by suitors in fine, colorful dress, some sporting fashionable curls or posing with a falcon.
One man carrying a traveler's staff stands apart, his red-and-blue clothing echoing the bow and arrows above Penelope's head. This likely foreshadows Odysseus's return in disguise as a beggar, when he seizes his bow and kills the suitors.
Background scenes show further episodes: Odysseus's ship bearing the Petrucci coat of arms; the sirens luring sailors to their doom while Odysseus, bound to the mast, listens safely; and Circe's coastal lair surrounded by pigs—painted as local Cinta Senese pigs—actually Odysseus's crew transformed by her sorcery.
The subject suited a marriage celebration, with Penelope as the ideal of fidelity, while Pandolfo may have felt personal resonance too. Like Odysseus, he had known exile, having been banished from Siena in the 1450s.
P.S. Here's more of the Odyssey in art!
P.P.S. Our Italian Renaissance 50 Postcards Set is a perfect little journey through Renaissance Italy! Do not miss it! :)