Image: Museo delle Porcellane, Florence
The Uffizi has drawn attention to Bartolomeo Passerotti’s 'On the Boat of Fishermen', a work dated to around 1580, through a brief post that pairs the painting with a classical riddle from Homeric legend. The museum’s note identifies the scene as a boat carrying fishermen and describes the puzzle said to have defeated Homer: “What we have taken, we have left; what we have not taken, we carry with us.” The answer, the post says, is lice.
The image and the accompanying legend place Passerotti’s painting within a tradition of learned visual wit, in which a seemingly simple rural or maritime subject carries a literary and intellectual game. By invoking Homer, the Uffizi frames the work not only as a genre scene but also as a picture tied to classical culture and verbal ingenuity. The museum’s wording presents the riddle as part of the painting’s immediate context, making the boat of fishermen the setting for an ancient puzzle.
Bartolomeo Passerotti, active in the late sixteenth century, is represented here by a work dated approximately 1580. The Uffizi post does not offer further interpretive detail, but it emphasizes the interplay between the painted scene and the enigma associated with it. In that sense, the artwork is being highlighted less as an isolated object than as a vehicle for narrative, joke, and classical reference.
The museum identified the painting in a social-media post on 2 August 2026, using the work to share a detail from its collection with followers online. The Uffizi’s message is concise, but it situates the painting within an easily retold story: fishermen on a boat, a riddle attributed to Homer, and the unexpected solution of lice. The post also tags the work simply as being at the Uffizi.
Museo delle Porcellane is the organization associated with the news item, while the source material itself points to the Uffizi as the collection context for the painting. No exhibition, public program, or separate event is announced in the source. The post functions instead as a collection highlight, bringing a specific painting into view through a compact classical anecdote.
With just a few lines, the Uffizi’s post turns Passerotti’s 'On the Boat of Fishermen' into a small lesson in Renaissance wit and inherited storytelling. The painting is identified by artist and date, the riddle is quoted, and the answer is supplied plainly: lice.
