The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen’s Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen is home to Medusa, the Gorgon with whistling hair and petrifying eyes. The unbearable sight of Medusa has been abundantly depicted throughout the ages, from Antiquity to the present day, from the Attic vases with Gorgo’s monstrous face to Luciano Garbati’s statue, which reverses the roles and turns Medusa into an ancient heroine, victorious over Perseus (ill. 1 and 2).
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- 1. Attic ceramics
Attributed to the Munich Painter (1512)
Amphora with black figures,
c. 510 BC
Ceramic - 41 x 27.5 cm
Boulogne-sur-Mer, Château Museum
Photo: Boulogne-sur-Mer, Château Museum - See the image in its page
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- 2. Luciano Garbati (1973)
Medusa Holding the Head of Perseus, 2023
Bronze - 215 x 88 cm
Artist’s studio
Photo: bbsg - See the image in its page
The curators, Alexis Merle du Bourg and Emmanuelle Delapierre, assisted by Lucie Rochette, attempted to balance the different sections of the chronological tour. They had to resist the temptation to overload the 19th century, which is particularly rich in Gorgons of all kinds, who appear on the large formats of the Salon, embodying the horrible beauty so dear to Romanticism and the femme fatale of the Symbolists. They were also careful not to neglect the Middle Ages, during which the Medusa played a less important role, or the 20th century, which turned away from mythology as a source of inspiration that was too classical or even horribly bourgeois. The end of the twentieth century and the twenty-first century, on the other hand, have seen a real craze for the Gorgon, who is making more and more appearances in the minor arts and in new modes of representation such as cinema. From tattoos and cartoons to video games and luxury goods - she is the logo of Versace, for whom "fashion is a weapon" -, the curators have solved the problem of this diversity of media by installing screens in the rooms on which photos and film extracts scroll past.
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- 3. Florentine artist,
Scipion, c. 1475
Marble - 61 x 40.5 x 11.5 cm
Paris, Musée du Louvre
Photo: RMN-GP - Musée du Louvre - See the image in its page
How can its longevity in the arts be explained? Why her, rather than the Sphinx, the Sirens, the Minotaur or the Cyclops? No doubt because Medusa is plural. She is a character in a story, Perseus’ antagonist, but she is also a symbol, a synecdoche, a severed head transformed into an emblem. Her multiple facets - and faces - are contradictory: she is both deadly and apotropaic; she can just as easily have the features of a hideous, sometimes grotesque monster as the appearance of a fatal beauty capable of eclipsing the critical faculties of male understanding; she is both killer and victim, raped by Poseidon. And this polyphony allows her to adapt, to echo the aspirations of each era, to the point of becoming an emblem for the feminist movement and for activists of the LGBT cause, Perseus embodying the detestable heterosexual white man.
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- 4. Maxmilián Pirner (1854-1924)
The End of All Things, 1887
Oil on canvas - 100 x 130 cm
Prague, National Gallery
Photo: National Gallery Prague - See the image in its page
The theme of this exhibition is not new [1]. It is a subject that has been treated with unprecedented breadth. And if the best-known works are missing, it doesn’t matter. The diversity and quality of the paintings and sculptures brought together more than compensate for the absence of the most famous. In fact, it would have been unreasonable to move the greatest masterpieces, which are the mainstays of some museums, for a thematic exhibition that allows us to discover lesser-known works [2]. So yes, we won’t be seeing the Gorgon of Corfu, or Caravaggio’s Medusa, or even Canova’s Perseus Triumphant. But we never tire of admiring Scipion and its breastplate adorned with a belching Gorgon, a delicate Florentine relief from the late fifteenth century whose attribution has been the subject of much ink (ill. 3), while less famous works are just as eye-catching, such as Maximiliân Pirner’s The End of All Things (ill. 4). And while the monumental Perseus in bronze by Cellini and the marble by Bernini are also missing, the curators have nevertheless obtained copies. The one after Bernini dates from the 18th century and is on loan from the Louvre (ill. 5), while a small bronze in Cellini’s hand from the Bargello is considered to be an intermediate modello of the final work.
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- 5. Anonymous (French?) after Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680)
Bust of Méduse, 18th-century ?
Marble - 51 x 38 x 38 cm
Paris, Musée du Louvre
Photo: bbsg - See the image in its page
The fascinating catalogue includes a number of well-documented essays corresponding to the sections of the tour, and devotes a commentary to each of the works on display. It also reproduces extracts from the various ancient texts that evoke the story of Medusa, and develops certain subjects that loans did not allow to be detailed in the exhibition, most notably the figures of the Erinyes. More generally, Alexis Merle du Bourg analyses the porosity of the Gorgon’s iconography, evoking her various avatars with reptilian hair, Envy for example - embodied in marble by an old woman with hanging breasts (ill. 6) - or the Plague in The Vision of Saint Françoise romaine by Nicolas Poussin, through to the Eternal Pain sculpted in 1913-1919 by Paul Dardé, whose title inspired by Dante’s Enfer has replaced the more explicit previous one: The Remorse of the Adulteress.
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- 6. Attributed to Heinrich Meyring called Enrico Marengo (1628-1723)
Invidia (Envy), last third of the 17th century ?
Marble
Venise, Ca’Rezzonico Museo del Settecento Veneziano
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What is the true story of Medusa? It varies according to the source. Gorgo appears in The Illiad and The Odyssey in the 8th century B.C. She is the guardian of the Underworld, the lock of Hades between the world of the living and the dead, between order and chaos. It is for this reason that she is sometimes depicted at the entrance to houses or on sarcophagi, invested with a protective mission. At the end of the 8th century BC, Hesiod evoked the three Gorgon sisters, daughters of marine divinities, of whom Medusa is the only mortal. Ovid developed her story in the Metamorphoses and the Pseudo-Apollodorus, in the 1st or 2nd century AD, detailed her death.
From one account to the next, Medusa is either a terrifying monster or a seductive woman who is united with or raped by Neptune/Poseidon in the temple of the chaste Minerva/Athena. Anxious to punish this sacrilege, the goddess targeted the seductive Gorgon rather than Neptune. She had to make her repulsive, so she mixed snakes into her beautiful hair and condemned her to turn to stone anyone who laid eyes on her. It was undoubtedly the despair of the young woman metamorphosed into a monster that Bernini wanted to convey in the marble, rather than a threatening being.
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- 7. Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898)
The Death of Medusa I (The Perseus Series), c. 1882
Gouache on paper - 124.5 x 116.9 cm
Southampton, City Art Gallery
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Perseus was subsequently commissioned to kill Medusa. He succeeded with the help of Hermes and Athena: one gave him winged sandals, the other a shield polished like a mirror, advising him never to look the Gorgon in the face, but to keep his eyes on her reflection, which Volterrano translates well in a painting kept at Schleissheim Castle. The hero was also given a helmet that made him invisible, a billhook to cut off the monster’s head and a bag to carry it. When Perseus decapitated Medusa, two beings sprang from her neck, children of Poseidon: Pegasus, the winged horse, and Chrysaor the warrior. The episode inspired few artists. Burne Jones offered a rare vision in 1882, in a work that forms part of a series of ten cartoons devoted to the story of Perseus between 1877 and 1885 (ill. 7). The painter worked on the basis of ancient works, in particular a hydria, exhibited in the first room of the exhibition, and a terracotta plaque from the island of Milos in the British Museum.
If the Libyan desert is still infested with snakes today, it is because Perseus flew over it after his victory, holding the bloodied head of the Gorgon in his hand; drops of blood fell to the ground and were transformed into reptiles.
The story doesn’t end there. The victorious hero was flying peacefully through the sky, no doubt a little idle, when he spotted the beautiful Andromeda completely naked and tied to a rock, offered as a sacrifice to the local sea monster, which he promptly slaughtered. Then he went to wash his hands in the sea, taking care to long-term loaned the head of Medusa on a bed of seaweed. The seaweed became stained with blood and froze, thus giving rise to the coral to which the exhibition devotes a section. Perseus married Andromeda, but the wedding was disrupted by the unexpected arrival of Phineas, the beauty’s uncle and suitor, who was somewhat upset at being ousted. Accompanied by his rough and tumble companions, he proved to be in a murderous mood in the truest sense of the word, so much so that Perseus was forced to brandish Medusa’s head in his defence. "Since you are forcing me to do this, I will ask an enemy for help. Let those who love me avert their eyes, if I have friends here". It must be that not everyone loved him or that his friends were presumptuous, but whatever the case, many of them were petrified. This passage caught the attention of several artists, including Nattier, who chose it for his reception piece at the Académie in 1718. Before him, Sebastiano Ricci, Luca Giordano, Frans II Francken and Carrache also tackled the subject. The curators have nevertheless chosen to exhibit an anonymous painting, formerly attributed to Nicolas Poussin: this carefully tumultuous scene of chaos bears witness to the ambition of any artist (ill. 8).
Perseus gave Medusa’s head to Athena, who thus wears the apotropaic gorgonéion on her cloak or aegis. The head also appeared on the shields of Achilles and Agamemnon. Considered an attribute of power at the time, this motif was added to parade armour and shields, notably that of Charles V.
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- 8. 17th-century French, Flemish or from Liège painter
Perseus petrifying Phineas and his companions with the head of Medusa, 1650s (?)
Oil on canvas - 165 × 243.4 cm
London, The National Gallery
Photo: The National Gallery - See the image in its page
The reading of the myth has evolved considerably over the centuries, as the chronological tour clearly shows. The first section displays an anthology of antique vases, amphorae and hydria, with the Gorgoneion on the body. This androgynous face is always presented head-on, eyes wide open, tongue hanging out, face grimacing, distorted by a sneer, and also sporting a moustache and a shaggy beard. He embodies the terror that dissolves being. Gorgo is the sound of the monster swallowing and devouring.
The Middle Ages set out to interpret the ancient themes, and Christian morality turned Medusa into a seductive beauty. Boccaccio devoted a chapter to her in his history of the Ladies of Renown, written in 1361 and 1362; she appears in the guise of a princess whose beauty petrifies love. In the Roman de la rose, she has the appearance of a medieval warrior. The story was copied many times by scribes who took the liberty of modifying it; thus the manuscript in the Bibliothèque Saint-Geneviève contains an extrapolation that focuses on Medusa and Perseus and features the two characters in an unexpected duel of chivalry.
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- 9. Anonymous (painter from the
Spanish Netherlands?)
Medusa, c. 1600 (or c. 1620-1630?)
Oil on panel - 49 x 74 cm
Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi
Photo: Gallerie degli Uffizi - See the image in its page
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- 10. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
with Frans Snyders (1579-1657) and workshop
Head of Medusa, c. 1613
Oil on panneau - 68.5 x 118 cm
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Photo: Kunsthistorisches Museum - See the image in its page
From the Renaissance onwards, the rediscovery of Greek philosophers, most notably Plato and Aristotle, brought back the notion of mimesis. Artists sought to depict a convincing monster. Thus Vasari mentions a painting by the young Leonardo da Vinci, now lost, showing Medusa on a rondache (circular shield). The painter is said to have gathered together in a room the most horrible animals he could find, locusts, bats, snakes and lizards, in order to create a hideous monster emerging from a dark cave. Then he sent for his father, who recoiled in horror.
An anonymous painting in the Uffizi, once attributed to Leonardo, is contrasted in the exhibition with the famous painting by Rubens that we saw in the exhibition on crawling beasts at the Rijksmuseum (see article) (ill. 9 and 10). Both feature a freshly severed head of Medusa, lying on the ground in a swarm of snakes emanating from its bloody neck, an allusion to the Libyan desert evoked by Ovid. Its apotropaic function is set aside in favour of an audacious narrative approach: the head is not presented head-on, but is posed from the side, alone, with no other protagonists or props in the narrative. The anonymous painting shows an androgynous head; Rubens’ painting suggests a feminine beauty that is still discernible despite the vermin and decay of the pulpits. The painter mixed genres, painting mythology, allegory and still life.
The work in the Uffizi is now considered to have been created by a painter from the Spanish Netherlands around 1600. Some historians claim that it is later than Rubens’ work, while others believe that it was inspired by the Flemish master’s painting and is a step towards the still life genre known as undergrowth.
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- 11. Joseph Blanc (1846-1904)
Perseus, 1869
Oil on canvas - 302 x 174 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
Photo: RMN-GP/Patrice Schmidt - See the image in its page
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- 12. Jacques Wagrez (1850-1908)
Perseus, 1879
Oil on canvas - 280.6 x 170 cm
Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts
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While the artists illustrated the various twists and turns of the myth, they allowed themselves certain liberties. The 19th-century section thus features two large paintings depicting the triumph of Perseus, one by Joseph Blanc in 1869, the other by Jacques Clément Wagrez in 1879 (ill. 11 and 12). A disciple of Émile Bin and a pupil of Alexandre Cabanel at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Blanc won the Prix de Rome in 1867. Among the works he sent to Paris, Persée was exhibited and awarded a medal at the Salon of 1870. The preparatory sketch betrays the artist’s hesitations: faithful to the story, it shows Perseus in the front, brandishing the screaming head of Medusa, also presented in the front. The nudity of the hero is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Ignudi. He is wearing the winged heel-pieces and harpè given to him by the gods. The final work reverses the composition and departs from the text: Perseus is now armed with a sword, wears an extravagant helmet and rides Pegasus, with whom he is theoretically unrelated. He brandishes Medusa’s head, much less expressive than in the drawing, presented in profile; the snakes on his head are more restrained, forming like a diadem over his long, beautiful hair.
Wagrez’s painting also won a prize, and was acquired by the State. The other two Gorgons, Medusa’s sisters, are rarely depicted and appear in the background. The painter also allowed himself a few deviations from the story, and gave his composition an aviary feel, multiplying the motif of wings on Medusa’s back, on Perseus’ heels and on his helmet.
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- 13. Wilhelm Trübner (1851-1917)
Head of Medusa, before 1895
Oil on board mounted on panel - 66.5 x 48 cm
Cologne, Letter Stiftung
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Medusa seduced academic painters; she also fascinated the Romantics and Symbolists, enabling artists to go beyond the simple category of the Beautiful, to subvert the norms of harmony and balance of classical aesthetics to give rise to a troubled art, and tend towards the Sublime. It embodies this confrontation with the immeasurable, sending us back to our insignificance and provoking astonishment. Symbolism and Art Nouveau also showed a specific interest in the femme fatale. Three heads exhibited side by side, produced in the 1890s by three different artists, offer nuanced interpretations: Franz von Stuck conveys both the irresistible attraction of this face and the mortal danger it represents. Böcklin shows a woman who is both frightened and afraid (see news item of 15/6/23). Finally, Wilhelm Trübner extinguishes her gaze, annihilating its power. Her eyelids are closed, her heavy tongue seems to weigh down on her lips, which are not animated by a smile, the snakes in her hair hang down, her complexion is greenish, she looks like a corpse. Medusa is human and dead.
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- 14. Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929)
Head of Medusa
Door hammer, 1925
Bronze - 57.5 x 21.4 x 21.1 cm
Paris, Musée Bourdelle
Paris, Musée Bourdelle - See the image in its page
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Much more than Perseus, the real victor over the Gorgon is the artist, who freezes her in stone, in bronze, on canvas, and bends her to aesthetic demands. The hero was ridiculed in 1887 by Jules Laforgue in his collection Moralités légendaires: Perseus, who had come to rescue Andromeda, brandished Medusa’s head to petrify the sea creature, but the Gorgon simply refused to open her eyes, remembering that she and the monster had an old friendship. And here was the valiant warrior stuck in a grotesque posture, arm outstretched, waiting for the head’s goodwill. Psychology also took up the myth: Sigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi both wrote about Medusa, seeing in it the male fear of castration. As for the 20th century, it gave little power to the monster. Of course, Medusa took on a religious dimension in Jawlensky, who was obsessed by the motif of the face (see the article), but Alberto Giacometti used her as a decorative object for Jean-Michel Frank and Antoine Bourdelle turned her into a door hammer, no doubt because losing your head or banging it against walls is ultimately the same thing.
Curators: Alexis Merle du Bourg, Emmanuelle Delapierre, assisted by Lucie Rochette.
Under the direction of Alexis Merle du Bourg and Emmanuelle Delapierre, Under the gaze of Medusa. De la Grèce antiques aux arts numériques, 340 p., In Fine 2023, 39 €. ISBN: 9782382031230.
Practical information: Musée des Beaux-Arts, Le Château, 14 000 Caen. Tel: 02 31 30 47 70. Open Tuesday to Friday, 9.30am to 12.30pm and 1.30pm to 6pm, 11am to 6pm at weekends and on public holidays. Open every day in July and August. Admission: €5.50 (reduced €3.50).