Medusa (mythology)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In Greek mythology, Medusa (Greek: Μέδουσα, Médousa, "guardian, protectress", was a monstrous chthonic female character, essentially an extension of an apotropaic mask, gazing upon whom could turn onlookers to stone. Secondarily, Medusa was tripled into a trio of sisters, the Gorgons.
Géricault's Medusa
After by the hostile reception of his The Raft of the Medusa, Géricault went to London in 1820, after having his picture shipped to England, where a traveling showman exhibited it in several towns.
Leonardo's Medusa
Medusa in art
From ancient times, the Medusa was immortalized in numerous works of art, including:
- Medusa on the breastplate of Alexander the Great, as depicted in the Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii's House of the Faun (c. 200 BC)
- The "Rondanini Medusa", a Roman copy of the Gorgoneion on the aegis of Athena
- Medusa (oil on canvas) by Leonardo da Vinci
- Perseus with the Head of Medusa (bronze sculpture) by Benvenuto Cellini (1554)
- Medusa (oil on canvas) by Caravaggio (1597).
- Tête de Méduse, by Peter Paul Rubens (1618)
- Perseus Turning Phineus and his Followers to Stone (oil on canvas) by Luca Giordano (early 1680s).
- Perseus with the Head of Medusa (marble sculpture) by Antonio Canova (1801)
- Medusa (oil on canvas) by Arnold Böcklin (c. 1878)
- Perseus (bronze sculpture) by Salvador Dalí
Medusa remained a common theme in art in the nineteenth century, when her myth was retold in Thomas Bulfinch's Mythology. Edward Burne-Jones' Perseus Cycle of paintings and a drawing by Aubrey Beardsley gave way to the twentieth century works of Paul Klee, John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso, and Auguste Rodin's bronze sculpture The Gates of Hell.
