Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art

Dangerous Beauty Medusa in Classical Art

the metropolitan museum of art bulletin winter 2018

Dangerous Beauty

Medusa in Classical Art kiki karoglou

the metropolitan museum of art , new york

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President’s Note Medusa, the monstrous Gorgon of Greek mythology whose gaze turned beholders to stone, became increasingly anthropomorphic and feminine beginning in the fifth century b.c.

A similar transformation occurred in representations of other female half-human beings from Greek myth, such as sphinxes, sirens, and the sea monster Scylla. Believed to have protective powers, these mythical hybrid creatures were frequently employed on sepulchral monuments, sacred architecture, military equipment, drinking vessels, and the luxury arts. Their metamorphosis was a consequence of the idealizing humanism of Greek art of the Classical period (480–323 b.c.), which understood beauty as the result of harmony and ideal proportions, a concept that influenced not only the repre­ sentation of the human body but also that of mythological beings.

The popularity of Medusa and other hybrid creatures from Greek myth has never waned, leading to their interpretation and adaptation in many other contexts. Among the most powerful and resonant in Western culture, their stories and images have inspired poets, artists, ­psychoanalysts, feminist critics, political ­theorists, and fashion designers. This Bulletin and the exhibition it accompanies explore the changing ways in which Medusa and other hybrid creatures were imagined and depicted from antiquity to the present day. Drawn ­primarily from The Met collection, the exhibition

examines a wide range of works dating from the late sixth century b.c. to the twentieth century, from ancient Greek armor, drinking cups, and funerary urns to Neoclassical ­cameos and contemporary fashion. Also featured is one of the earliest portrayals in Greek art of Medusa as a beautiful young woman.

“Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art,” on view at The Met until January 6, 2019, is organized by Kiki Karoglou, Associate Curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Art, who is also the author of this Bulletin. We are grateful to her; to the American Numismatic Society, New York, which loaned the coins on view in the exhibition; and to the private lenders who graciously made their works available, including Andrés A. Mata, Hiram Carruthers Butler and Andrew Spindler-Roesle, and one lender who wishes to remain anonymous. The private lenders to the exhibition are also members of the Philodoroi—the Friends of Greek and Roman Art at The Met—whom we thank along with all other supporters of the department. We are also deeply grateful to The Vlachos Family Fund and Diane Carol Brandt for their generous support of the exhibition and to the Jenny Boondas Fund for its support of this Bulletin.

Daniel H. Weiss President and CEO The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Beginning in the fifth century b.c., the Gorgon Medusa—a legendary monster whose gaze could turn beholders to stone—underwent a visual transformation from grotesque to beautiful, becoming in the process increasingly anthropomorphic and feminine. A similar shift in the representations of other mythical female ­half-human beings (or hybrids), such as sphinxes, sirens, and the sea monster Scylla, took place at the same time.1 The iconographic makeover of these inherently terrifying figures—​symbols of death and the Underworld believed to have ­apotropaic (protective) powers—was a result of the idealizing humanism of Greek art of the Classical period (480–323 b.c.). Hybrids continued to evolve in form and meaning after the Classical period, however, and many still resonate in modern culture and the artistic imagination.2

Monsters and the Genealogy of Terror Throughout human history, monsters have emerged as figments of the imagination in various cultures.3 These fearsome supernatural beings, often hybrid in form, share many characteristics: they are usually gigantic, malevolent, and violent, and frequently reptilian, ugly, or bizarre-looking. They devour humans and live in remote places such as caves or the depths of lakes.

A metaphor for nature’s threatening forces, they can also symbolize innate human fears and anxieties, sexual aggression, and guilt.

Often described as monsters or demons, a wide repertoire of theriomorphic creatures— combining animal parts with human features and fantastical appendages—was introduced to the Greek world from the Near East and Egypt during the late eighth and seventh centuries b.c.

Imbued with protective powers, these figures functioned as apotropaia, or talismans that turn away evil, and as such were frequently employed 4

on sepulchral monuments, sacred architecture, military equipment, drinking vessels, and the luxury arts.

The majority of Greek hybrid beings were imagined as female, blending the human female form with elements from animals such as snakes, birds, lions, dogs, and fish. Most were also related by parentage or common ancestry and symbolized a primordial, grisly vision of the terror of the sea. Phorkys and Keto, sea deities and children of the god Pontos (Ocean), bore the three Gorgons; the three Graiai (old women from birth who shared one eye and one tooth among themselves); the sirens;4 and the dreadful Echidna, halfwoman and half-snake, who in turn mothered Scylla, the Harpies, and Hydra.

Reshuffling what was familiar, hybrids represented all that was alien, the “Other.” Morpho­ logical oddities such as hybrids were considered anomalies in ancient Greece and, thus, of a

destructive nature. At the same time, in a society centered on the male citizen, the feminization of monsters served to demonize women. Wronged by men and overcome with rage and desperation, heroines of ancient Greek drama such as Clytemnestra and Medea commit monstrous acts and were judged deviant females who threatened cultured society. For this reason tragedians often compared them to Medusa and other female monsters and beasts.

Beginning in the fifth century b.c., as the grotesque monsters of the Archaic period were rethought, rationalized, and humanized, their animalistic features were progressively softened, and female hybrids became more beautiful in appearance, or, in the words of classicist Susan Woodford, “aesthetically improved to suit the sensibilities of the classical period,” when ugliness was largely avoided.5 In ancient Greece, the concept of beauty, whether of animate beings or inanimate objects, was understood as harmony and proportion among constituent parts. A beautiful form delighted the senses.6 Physical beauty

was always connected with goodness of character—the Greek ideal of kalokagathia—and since it was thought that character was reflected in one’s physiognomy, physical ugliness connoted moral ugliness. In his Poetics, Aristotle argued that it is possible to make beautiful imitations of ugly things.

It is precisely the power of art to portray ugly and horrible creatures in a beautiful way that renders their ugliness acceptable, even pleasurable.7 This connection of beauty with horror, embodied above all in the figure of Medusa, outlived antiquity and continued to fascinate and inspire artists for centuries.8 Medusa, in effect, became the archetypal femme fatale: a conflation of femininity, erotic desire, violence, and death.

Beauty, like monstrosity, enthralls, and female beauty in particular was perceived—and, to a certain extent, is still perceived—to be both enchanting and dangerous, or even fatal. In this sense, even Helen of Troy, considered the personification of ideal beauty, was deemed responsible, albeit inadvertently, for the Trojan War and the ultimate destruction of Troy.

Perseus and the Gorgon Medusa The three Gorgons—Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa—were terrible monsters who lived in the Western Ocean, conceived as the frontier of the inhabited world (Hesiod, Theogony 274–75). The Gorgons had large heads covered in dragon scales, boar’s tusks, brazen hands, and golden wings.

Whoever looked at their hideous faces turned instantly to stone. Of the three sisters, only Medusa was mortal. She is the most famous Gorgon because of her role in the legend of the hero Perseus, who is the great-grandfather of Herakles, the quin­ tessential monster-slayer of Greek mythology.

The most extensive narrative of the PerseusMedusa encounter is preserved in the Bibliotheke (Library 2.4.1–4) of pseudo-Apollodorus, a first- or second-century a.d. compiler whose account re­

lied on at least one fifth-century b.c. source, the Athenian mythographer Pherekydes. According to this version, Akrisios, the king of Argos, ­received an oracle that his grandson by his daughter Danaë would kill him. To avoid this fate, he imprisoned Danaë in an underground bronze chamber, where she could not be approached by suitors. Zeus, however, fell in love with her and seduced her after penetrating the chamber as a stream of gold. As a result of this union, Danaë bore Zeus’s son Perseus. Upon learning this, Akrisios shut both mother and child in a wooden chest and cast it into the sea. The chest floated to the island of Seriphos, where Danaë and Perseus were rescued and looked after by a fisherman named Diktys. In time, the island’s tyrannical 5

king, Polydektes—Diktys’s brother—wanted Danaë for his wife, but Perseus opposed the match. On the pretext of gathering contributions toward a wedding gift for the Peloponnesian princess Hippodameia, Polydektes asked the island’s noblemen to furnish horses but accepted instead the young hero’s boastful offer to bring him a Gorgon’s head.

With the help of Hermes, Athena, and the nymphs, Perseus equipped himself with an adamantine sickle (harpe); winged sandals; the cap of Hades (kunee), which rendered him invisible; and the kibisis, a pouch in which to put the Gorgon’s head. After receiving instructions on how to find and kill Medusa, Perseus flew to the Ocean and found the Gorgons asleep. Averting his eyes to avoid their petrifying gaze, Perseus used a bronze shield as a mirror and, with Athena’s guidance, cut off Medusa’s head and escaped the pursuit of her two sisters.

On his journey back to Seriphos, he rescued the Ethiopian princess Andromeda, whom he found chained to a rock as sacrifice to a sea monster, and married her. Upon his return to the

island he brought Medusa’s head to the palace, using it to turn king Polydektes and his entourage to stone, thereby saving his mother from the unwanted marriage. He then appointed Diktys king of Seriphos and gave Athena the Gorgon’s head, which she put on her shield. In the end, the oracle was fulfilled when Perseus inadvertently killed his grandfather Akrisios with a misthrown discus during funeral games in Larissa.

The Perseus story is a classic folktale hero’s quest, in which a malevolent king sends a hero— typically someone of noble or, usually, ­semi-​ divine descent and malign destiny—on a suicide mission that involves slaying a monster or bringing back some distant magical object. He accomplishes this task with the help of the gods, overcoming obstacles along the way and, quite often, winning the maiden upon his return, whereupon, as one scholar put it, “the nasty king dies messily.” 9 The essential plot—a young, brave, and handsome hero sets off to slay a hideous and wicked monster—is familiar to us from countless reiterations and adaptations in literature, comic books, and blockbuster movies.

The Beautiful Medusa In the Roman poet Ovid’s retelling of the Medusa myth from the early first century a.d. (Meta­ morphoses 4.778–803), Perseus himself narrates his encounter with the Gorgon during the celebration of his wedding to Andromeda at the court of the Ethiopian king Cepheus. The hero describes the nightmarish landscape he encountered on the way: “On all sides through the fields and along the ways he saw the forms of men and beasts changed into stone by one look at Medusa’s face. But he himself had looked upon the image of that dread face reflected from the bright bronze shield his left hand bore; and while deep sleep held fast both the snakes and her who wore them, he smote her head clean from her neck, and from 6

the blood of his mother swift-winged Pegasus and 10 The visage of Medusa his brother sprang.” reflected on a polished bronze shield can be seen on a late Classical South Italian krater (fig. 1).

When asked why Medusa alone of the Gorgons had snakes entwined in her hair, Perseus explains that she was the most beautiful of the three sisters, endowed with hair that was widely admired.

After Neptune (Poseidon) raped her inside the temple of Minerva (Athena), the goddess changed Medusa’s hair into foul snakes as punishment.

Henceforth, Minerva wore the snaky head on her breast to frighten her enemies, as pictured on a red-figure lekythos (fig. 2). Although in Ovid’s version Medusa is the victim rather than the

­ erpetrator, her violation is portrayed as a desep cration of sacred space that brings down the virgin goddess’s wrath upon her.

This transition from the tale of a hero combating a monster to the sad story of a beautiful maiden transformed into a monster affected artistic representations of the myth. The striking contrast between the monstrous Archaic Gorgons and the beautiful Hellenistic and Roman Medusae was recognized in the late nineteenth century by noted archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler, who devised an evolutionary model of Medusa based on three types: the Archaic, the Middle (representing the intermediate stage in the fifth century b.c., when grotesque elements were still present in artistic depictions), and the Beautiful.11

1. Mixing bowl (bell krater) with Perseus, Athena with the head of Medusa, and Hermes. Attributed to the Tarporley Painter. Greek (South Italian), Classical, red-figure, ca. 400–385 b.c. Terracotta, H. 12 in.

(30.5 cm). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1970.237)

Despite challenges by recent scholars, his typology remains broadly applicable.12 In Archaic Greek art, the Gorgon Medusa is shown both as a full female figure dressed in a short chiton (fig. 4) and as a severed head or mask, known as the Gorgoneion. In either representation the Gorgon has a porcine face, with fierce, bulging eyes; a large, simian nose; a wide, grinning mouth; and a protruding tongue. On an Archaic stand in The Met collection her bared, serrated teeth are bordered by two pairs of tusks (fig. 3). She also has the stubble of a mustache, a full beard, stylized locks of hair, and pierced ears.

Ranging from the fearsome to the grotesque, the features that make up her hideous countenance are more characteristic of masks than of specific

2. Lekythos (oil flask) with Athena.

Attributed to the Tithonos Painter.

Greek (Attic), Classical, red-figure, ca. 480 b.c. Terracotta, H. 13 ¾ in.

(34.9 cm), Diam. 4 ⅝ in. (11.8 cm).

Fletcher Fund, 1927 (27.122.6)

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animal representations. The Archaic 3. Stand with Gorgoneion. Signed by after Medusa’s decapitation. Rush­ Gorgon is always full-face, more- Ergotimos as potter and Kleitias as ing through the air, the Gorgon painter. Greek (Attic), Archaic, black-​ spreads her wings wide and moves over, glaring directly at the viewer. figure, ca. 570 b.c. Terracotta, H. 2 ¼ in.

(5.7 cm), Diam. 3 ½ in. her arms and legs forcefully in a This combination of frontality and monstrosity in a ­single, immediately (9 cm). Fletcher Fund, 1931 (31.11.4) pinwheel motion, an icono­graphic recognizable figure is what makes 4. Appliqué in the form of a Gorgon. convention frequently employed the Greek Gorgon such an original Greek, Archaic, late 6th century b.c. in Archaic art to denote speed.

2 ⅞ x 2 ⅞ x ½ in. (7.3 x 7.3 x and evocative image of radical dif- Bronze, An early fifth-century b.c. lime1.3 cm); H. (with base) 3 ¼ in. (8.3 cm). ference: of the absolute “Other.” 13 stone sarcophagus from Cyprus illusCollection of Andrés A. Mata Gorgons were often carved on trates the birth of Medusa’s offspring 5. Part of the funerary stele (grave funerary monuments as apotropaic marker) of Kalliades. Greek (Attic), from her union with Poseidon images intended to protect the Archaic, 550–525 b.c. Marble, 21 ½ x (fig. 6). The giant Chrysaor (whose name translates as “He who bears a grave. Medusa’s association with 14 ¾ x 5 ½ in. (54.6 x 37.5 x 14 cm); W. (bottom) 15 ½ in. (39.5 cm). death is u ­nsurprising, not only Rogers Fund, 1955 (55.11.4) golden sword”) and a wingless because of her petrifying gaze but Pegasus spring out of Medusa’s ­severed neck, while Perseus casualso considering her own mortality; she embodies the ugly truth that death is an ines- ally walks away. The scene looks like a caricature capable aspect of life. An Attic marble grave stele owing to its iconographic peculiarities: Perseus (fig. 5) represents a Gorgon in pursuit of Perseus is shown as a hunter accompanied by his dog,

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and he carries the Gorgon’s deadly 6. Sarcophagus with Pegasus and Polygnotos preserves one of the head on a stick. A roughly contem- Chrysaor born from Medusa’s earliest depictions of a beautiful severed neck as Perseus departs porary Attic white-​ ground leky­ with her head. Cypriot, Classical, Medusa (fig. 8). The Gor­gon sleeps ca. 475–450 b.c.

Limestone, thos depicts the action following peacefully on a hillside as Perseus ½ in. (202 cm), W. 28 ⅞ in.

Medusa’s decapitation in full swing: L. 79 approaches, sickle in hand, and (73.2 cm), H. 38 in. (96.5 cm).

Pegasus, the favorite steed of the The Cesnola Collection, Purchased grabs her by the hair. He looks Muses, springs from the severed by subscription, 1874–76 away to avoid her deadly gaze, (74.51.2451) neck of her well-formed, athletic though it is disarmed by sleep. The body, which lies on the ground 7. Lekythos (oil flask) with Perseus goddess Athena stands next to gushing blood, while Perseus escaping with the head of Medusa. him, looking on sternly. Quite Attributed to the Diosphos Painter. escapes with her head in his pouch Greek (Attic), Archaic, black-figure, unusual is the presence of a nim(fig. 7; see also rollout view on ca. 500 b.c. Terracotta, H. 9 ⅝ in. bus, or halo of rays, around (24.5 cm). Rogers Fund, 1906 page 47).

Perseus’s head, now faint but still (06.1070) In Classical Greek art, Medusa visible. Perseus is the only hero was progressively transformed into depicted with these rays, but an attractive young woman. Simul­taneously an rather than glorifying him, they probably allude aggressor and a victim, she became a tragic figure, to his katasterismos, or his ascension to the night as evidenced by Attic representations of her death. sky upon his death and sub­sequent transformaA red-figure pelike attributed to the painter tion into a constellation.14

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References to Medusa’s beauty 8. Pelike (jar) with Perseus figure pelike, Medusa, now wingless beheading the sleeping Medusa. can be traced as far back as early Attributed to Polygnotos. Greek and nude from the waist up, and fifth-century b.c. poetry—Pindar, for (Attic), Classical, red-figure, with an agonized expression on her ca. 450–440 b.c.

Terracotta, instance, speaks of the “­beautiful-​ face, gestures dramatically as she ⅞ in. (47.8 cm), Diam. 13 ½ in. cheeked Medusa” (Pythian Ode H. 18 pleads for her life (fig. 9). Centuries (34.3 cm). Rogers Fund, 1945 12.16)—​and scholars have long sur- (45.11.1) later, depictions of the episode, such as an e­ighteenth-century etching mised that a lost monumental wall painting was the inspiration for this and other by Alexander Runciman (fig. 10), likewise similar contemporary depictions of the myth.15 attempted to provoke pity in the viewer for the The act of beheading a beautiful sleeping maiden monster’s impending demise. After the fourth seems rather unheroic, however, and it is unclear century b.c., Medusa’s decapitation and the whether the scene on the Polygnotos vase is ­ensuing pursuit of Perseus by the Gorgons ceased intended to elicit sympathy for the monster or to be illustrated, while subsequent episodes in the myth—such as the rescue of Andromeda, laughter at the hero.16 In the late Classical period the trend toward which predominates in Roman art—gained in humanization and feminization intensified while, popularity.17 Gorgoneia were ubiquitous until the end of at the same time, the violence of Archaic representations of the beheading returned. On a red-­ antiquity, appearing on temples, artisan work-

9. Pelike with Perseus beheading Medusa. Greek (Attic), red-figure, 360–350 b.c.

From Pantikapaion (modern Kertsch). Terracotta, H. 9 ½ in.

(24 cm). The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (P.1851/52 6)

10. Alexander Runciman (British, 1736–1785). Perseus and the Sleeping Medusa, 1774. Etching; plate, 6 ⅜ x 9 ⅞ in. (16.3 x 25.2 cm). The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1969 (69.574.14)

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11. Stater. Greek (Neapolis), Archaic, 510–500 b.c. Silver, Wt. 9.689 g. American Numismatic Society, New York

Gift, 1954 (54.11.3). b. Greek (South Italian), Classical, 4th century b.c. 9 ⅛ x 10 ¾ in.

(23.2 x 27.3 cm). Rogers Fund, 1910 (10.210.92). c. Greek 12a–c. Three terracotta antefixes (South Italian), Classical, (roof tiles). a. Greek, Archaic, 4th century b.c. 6 ⅝ x 6 ⅞ in. ca. 500 b.c. Terracotta, H. 6 in.

(16.8 x 17.5 cm). Rogers Fund, (15.2 cm). Christos G. Bastis 1910 (10.210.51)

shops and kilns, private houses, furniture, utensils, drinking cups, and other vessels. They were incorporated into fortification walls and gates, lined the edges of the roofs of temples and other buildings, adorned the coins of many Greek cities (fig. 11), were engraved on gems and cameos used as personal amulets, and ornamented shields, helmets, cuirasses, and greaves (armor that protects the shin). Their countenances, grisly and transfixing, were thought to have protective, defensive powers by intimidating the spectator and provoking fear in the enemy. This omnipresent and grotesque, almost comic visage may be explained as a bearable reflection of the terrifying alterity of death.18 Indeed, one contemporary writer has argued that the inspiration for Medusa’s visual representation was the bloated face of a recently dead and decomposing body.19 Like the figure of the Medusa, the Gorgoneion underwent a transformation from grotesque to beautiful, but since attractive faces cannot easily incite fear, artists portrayed Medusa’s head with wild, snake-infested hair; a pathetic, agonized expression; and other unnerving elements such as exposed teeth. This transition is apparent in a variety of media. It is vividly illustrated on a series of terracotta antefixes (roof tiles) from the Greek colonies in southern Italy dating from the early sixth to the early third century b.c. (fig. 12). An imposing, grotesque Gorgoneion occupies almost the entire surface of Achilles’ shield on a fragmentary Attic terracotta relief (fig. 13), while a beautiful version is emblazoned on the shield of a terracotta warrior figurine (fig. 14). Two fine 12

South Italian bronze greaves bear a Gorgoneion executed in repoussé relief on the uppermost part, which protects the warrior’s kneecap. The pupils of the Gorgon’s eyes in the earlier, ­sixth-century b.c. example are inlaid with amber and ivory, which in their pristine condition would have intensified the fierceness of her gaze (fig. 15), while on the later, fourth-century b.c. greave Medusa’s face is noticeably less repellent (fig. 16).

The figure of a running Gorgon decorates the tondo of a fine Attic drinking cup dated to about 575 b.c. (fig. 17). With a full beard, bared teeth, and protruding tongue, she is still very masculine and forbidding in appearance. Less ferocious is

13. Fragment of a relief with Achilles carrying a Gorgon shield. Greek (Attic), Archaic, ca. 600 b.c. Terracotta, 16 ½ x 9 ⅞ x 1 ½ in. (42 x 25 x 3.7 cm).

Samuel D. Lee Fund, 1942 (42.11.33)

14. Horse and rider figurine.

Cypriot, Hellenistic, early 3rd century b.c. Terracotta, H. 8 in.

(20.2 cm). The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76 (74.51.1784)

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the cursorily drawn Gorgoneion on the tondo of another Attic drinking cup, an eye-kylix (fig. 18).

When this cup was lifted, two sets of large, disembodied eyes on the exterior stared at the drinker, who, upon draining its contents, would find the face of the Gorgon looking back from the interior, as if warning against the ill effects of too much wine. These painted, grotesque examples on drinking cups were subsequently replaced by heads of the beautiful Medusa in relief in the roundels of Hellenistic cups and bowls (fig. 19).

The famed Medusa Rondanini, one of the most mysterious and intriguing works of classical antiquity (fig. 20), is generally considered to reflect the first beautiful Gorgoneion in Greek art. Named after Rome’s Palazzo Rondanini, where it was formerly exhibited, this fourteen-

inch-tall marble mask drew Goethe’s attention in 1786 while the poet was collecting casts of masterpieces of classical sculpture during his first stay in Rome. In his diary Goethe wrote of the “over-lifesize mask of a Medusa in which the fearful rigidity of death is admirably portrayed. I own a good cast of it, but nothing is left of the magic of the original.” He wrote of the sculpture again the next year: “[It] made a great impression on me. . . .

I would say something about it if everything one could say about such a work were not a waste of breath. Works of art exist to be seen, not talked about, except, perhaps, in their presence.” 20 The Rondanini is a masterful composition full of new and surprising elements, such as the small wings on top of the head (in place of the large ones attached to the body) and the pair of snakes

15. Greave (shin guard) for the left leg. Greek (South Italian), Archaic, 550–500 b.c. Bronze, H. 19 ⅞ in.

(50.4 cm), W. 4 ¼ in. (10.7 cm).

Private collection, New York 16. Greave for the left leg. Greek (South Italian), Classical, 4th century b.c. Bronze, H. 15 ¾ in.

(40 cm), W. 4 ⅞ in. (12.4 cm). Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan P. Rosen, 1991 (1991.171.45)

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17. Kylix: Siana cup (drinking cup) with a running Gorgon. Attributed to the C Painter. Greek (Attic), Archaic, blackfigure, ca. 575 b.c. Terracotta, H. 5 ⅛ in.

(13 cm), Diam. 9 ⅝ in. (24.5 cm). Purchase, 1901 (01.8.6)

18. Kylix: eye-cup (drinking cup) with Gorgoneion. Greek (Attic), Archaic, black-figure, ca. 530 b.c. Terracotta, H. 6 ¼ in. (15.9 cm), Diam. 15 in.

(38.1 cm). Fletcher Fund, 1956 (56.171.36)

19. Shallow bowl with a low foot and the head of Medusa. Greek (South Italian, Campanian), Hellenistic, late 4th century b.c. Terracotta, H. 2 in. (5.1 cm), Diam. 7 ⅞ in. (20 cm). Collection of Hiram Carruthers Butler and Andrew Spindler-Roesle

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knotted together under the chin. A 20. Medusa Rondanini. Roman, sculptor, ­perhaps a shield device of 1st–2nd century a.d., one of his statues of Athena.21 closer look at the partially open Imperial, copy of a 5th-century b.c. Greek Although many scholars question a mouth, however, reveals the original(?). Marble, H. 14 ⅛ in.

(36 cm).

Glyptothek, Munich (252) fifth-century b.c. date for the origiGorgon’s upper row of teeth, which nal, the numerous fourth-century render her cold beauty repellent.

The high quality and classicizing style of the iterations of the type nonetheless demonstrate Medusa Rondanini have led some scholars to sur- its widespread fame.22 Gorgoneia of the beautiful type did not mise that it is a Roman, first-century a.d. copy of a famous fifth-century b.c. monumental work by become common until the end of the fourth cenPheidias, the most acclaimed Classical Greek tury b.c. Maintaining their funerary function,

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they often adorned cinerary urns, 21. Hydria (water jar) with shield with gantly tied under her neck, resemsuch as an early Hellenistic terra- Medusa emblem. Greek (Ptolemaic), ble a clothing accessory.

Hellenistic, 3rd century b.c.

An exquisite chariot-pole finial cotta hydria from the Greek ceme- Terracotta, H. 16 in. (40.5 cm), with the head of Medusa in high tery of Hadra, in Alexandria, Egypt Diam. 11 in. (27.8 cm). Purchase, (fig. 21). On this vessel a Medusa’s 1890 (90.9.67) relief shows the popularity of the head, represented wingless, is 22. Two-handled vase with the head Rondanini type in Roman decorative arts (fig. 23).23 Medusa’s wideemblazoned on a shield painted in of Medusa. Greek (South Italian, Canosan), Early Hellenistic, open eyes are inlaid in silver, and tempera colors on white engobe. Apulian, late 4th–early 3rd century b.c.

Rendered in a t­hree-quarter view Terracotta, H. 30 ¾ in. (78.1 cm), the pupils were once set with preDiam. 17 ⅜ in.

(44 cm).

Rogers Fund, against a blue background and cious stones. Their shine would have 1906 (06.1021.246a, b) skillfully foreshortened, she looks magnified the effect of her transupward, rather than directly at the fixing gaze, conveying its power to viewer. Medusa’s beautiful, mesmerizing face petrify. Thick, wavy locks, flying loose, frame her dominates the body of another early Hellenistic beautiful face, while two small wings rise from funerary vessel that was part of a lavishly fur- the head. Two snakes rear their heads from under nished burial (fig. 22). Here, her head is sculpted the hair at the forehead, their tails tightly interin remarkably high relief, and her intense gaze twined below the chin, while Medusa’s bared was originally enhanced by color. The only wild, teeth produce a chilling effect. On another bronze “monstrous” feature is her unruly hair. Even the finial, probably from a ship, Medusa has lost her pair of snakes, whose heads are neatly arranged wings and two identical snakes crown her bloated on top of her hair and whose long tails are ele- face (fig. 24).

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23. Chariot-pole finial with the head of Medusa. Roman, Imperial, 1st–2nd century a.d. Bronze, silver, and copper, H. 7 ¼ in.

(18.3 cm), W. 7 in. (17.9 cm), D. 4 ¼ in. (10.7 cm). Rogers Fund, 1918 (18.75) 24. Finial with the head of Medusa.

Roman, Imperial, 1st century a.d.

Bronze and silver, H. 4 ⅜ in.

(11.1 cm), W. 3 ⅞ in. (9.7 cm), D. 3 ⅞ in. (9.7 cm). Purchase, Arthur Darby Nock Bequest, in memory of Gisela M. A. Richter, 1967 (67.11.19)

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With its round shape and striking features, of these wall paintings illustrated the myth of Medusa’s powerful face was particularly appro- Perseus. A famous example comes from the Villa priate as an image for the central panel of floor San Marco at Stabiae, a resort town overlooking mosaics. One of the most spectacular known the Bay of Naples and buried by the eruption of examples was recently discovered in the outskirts Mount Vesuvius in a.d. 79. Perseus triumphantly of Rome in a trench being dug for a water pipe. It raises the severed head of Medusa as he realizes once decorated the dining room (triclinium) of a that he now possesses the power of her deadly house (domus) dated to the second century a.d. gaze as well as her miraculous blood, which (fig. 25).24 Within the mosaic Medusa comes alive could both heal and poison (fig. 27).25 The scene, thanks to the superb chiaroscuro modeling of the painted in the characteristic rich palette and face and the feral hair tangled with writhing, miniature style of Stabian frescoes, is set against a slithery-tongued snakes ready to attack. dark red background that accentuates the hero’s Gorgoneia were also among the typical deco- heroic nudity. The villa was first explored in rative motifs of Roman frescoes, usually employed 1750–54, and this fresco was perhaps the inspirain secondary wall panels or ceiltion for Antonio Canova’s cele25.

Central panel of a mosaic floor with ings along with garlands, birds, brated marble statue Perseus with the head of Medusa. Roman, 1st–2nd drinking vessels, amorini (putti), century a.d. Museo Nazionale Romano, the Head of Medusa in the Vatican, or cult implements (fig. 26). Many Baths of Diocletian, Rome which monumentalized in stone

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a strikingly similar composition. Con­ceived about 1790 and first displayed in 1801, Canova’s statue is based on the famed Apollo Belvedere, which it temporarily replaced at the Belvedere Court when the Apollo was taken to Paris by Napoleon in 1796. A more ornate version of the Vatican Perseus commissioned by Countess Valeria Tarnowska of Poland is currently the centerpiece of the Metro­ politan’s Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court (see back cover). Canova wittily makes Perseus look directly at the Gorgon’s head, in essence turning himself into stone.

26. Wall painting fragment with a Gorgoneion. Roman, Early Imperial, Julio-Claudian, ca. a.d. 14–68.

Fresco, L. 8 in. (20.3 cm). Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1892 (92.11.8) 27. Wall painting of Perseus holding the head of Medusa. Roman, 1st century b.c. Villa San Marco, Stabiae, Italy

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Along with sphinxes and geometric, vegetal, the coffin as a house or temple for the body.26 and Dionysiac motifs, Gorgoneia are part of Although this depiction of Medusa is reminiscent the stock design repertoire of Roman lead sar- of those on the pediments of Archaic temples, cophagi: coffins that were mass-produced in here the Gorgoneion is fully integrated in the Phoenicia (modern-day Syria) from the second decorative program. As an ornamental device, it to the fourth century a.d. On a side panel of also commonly appears on Roman marble saran ­ almost-complete sarcophagus cophagi festooned with g­arlands, in the Museum’s collection, a 28. End panel of a sarcophagus. such as an example from Tarsus in Gorgoneion occupies the center Roman, Imperial, late 2nd to mid-3rd Cilicia (modern-day Turkey) that of a temple’s arched pediment century a.d. Lead, 18 ¾ x 63 ¾ x entered the Metropolitan in 1870 as 17 ¼ in. (47.6 x 161.9 x 43.8 cm). Gift (fig. 28). Such architectural ele- of The Kevorkian Foundation, 1965 the Museum’s first accepted gift and ments represent the concept of (65.148) accessioned object.27

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Another striking example is a red The face of the Gorgon fre- 29. Pendant in the form of a Gorgoneion. Greek (Cypriot), jasper cameo of about 1840–​ 50 quently embellished jewelry, such Classical, ca. 450 b.c. Gold, 1 ⅛ x signed by the distinguished Italian as a gold pendant from Cyprus in ¾ in. (2.9 x 1.8 cm). The Cesnola The Met collection (fig. 29). The Collection, Purchased by engraver and sculptor Benedetto subscription, 1874–76 (74.51.3397b) motif of the sleeping Medusa, in Pistrucci, who was active in particular, was widely favored on 30. Peridot ring stone with the England and became chief medalist at the Royal Mint (fig. 33). A Hellenistic and Roman engraved sleeping Medusa. Roman, Late Republican or Imperial, ca. 1st technical tour de force, the cameo gemstones, a major luxury art form century b.c.–3rd century a.d. in the ancient world (fig. 30). L. ¾ in. (1.8 cm). Gift of John Taylor depicts a beautiful Medusa based Medusa’s delicate face was often Johnston, 1881 (81.6.120) freely on the Ronda­nini and cut in depicted in profile view (a Hellen­ 31. Cameo with the head of Medusa. high relief, endowing the figure istic invention) with heavy eyelids Roman, Early Imperial, 1st with the monu­men­tality of largecentury a.d. Glass, ⅞ x 1 in. (2.2 x scale sculpture. and stylized hair coiled like snakes 2.5 cm). Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, During the eighteenth and and rolled up and tied by a fillet (see 1917 (17.194.11) nineteenth centuries, cameos were illustration on page 1). Intaglios decCameo with the head of Medusa. used almost exclusively for perorated with Medusae in profile, 32.

Italy (Rome), ca. 1860–70. Onyx, 1 ⅞ x either winged or not, became very 1 ½ in. (4.8 x 3.8 cm). The Milton Weil sonal adornment and, along with brooches, were an essential part popular with Roman patrons in the Collection, 1940 (40.20.52) of a lady’s wardrobe. A particumid-first century b.c. Since some are signed in Greek, they were most likely pro- larly elegant brooch with Medusa in glass microduced in Rome by Greek gem cutters.28 A mosaic alludes to her frequent depiction on Roman first-century a.d. Roman glass cameo shows mosaics (fig. 34). Gorgoneia and sphinxes a­ ll’antica Medusa in a more dynamic, three-quarter view, were evoked as enigmas in eighteenth- and nineand donning a pathetic expression (fig. 31). teenth-century European decorative arts.30 A The Gorgoneion motif was often copied in splendid gilt-bronze mask is a testament to their Neoclassical cameos, such as an onyx cameo with mystique; its gleaming appearance endows Medusa a superb head of Medusa cut in white on black with a transcendent quality (fig. 35). (fig. 32). Medusa’s solemn beauty is framed by Since the Renaissance, Medusa has been repre29 voluminous hair with writhing, serpentine locks. sented with serpents in place of hair, an iconographic 22

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invention that Giorgio Vasari attributed to young Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Caravaggio painted one of the most frightful, haunting images of the snake-haired Medusa on an old rotella, a large, round parade shield, for Cardinal del Monte, his first patron in Rome, who in turn gave it to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, the grand duke of Tuscany, as a wedding present for his son in 1608 (fig. 36). As a shield device, the Medusa head was intended to function in its traditional apotropaic role, to immobilize the enemies of the prince. At the same time, Caravaggio’s painting doubles as the shield of Perseus, reproducing the reflection, or simulacrum, of Medusa prior to her petrification by her own gaze. The image ­captures the same harrowing stare that all of her victims

glimpsed and evokes the savage cry they heard the moment before they died.31 The image and story of Medusa continued to resonate in the twentieth-century imagination.

Sigmund Freud, who found classical myth a rich source for his psychoanalytic theories, viewed the Medusa myth from a male perspective. In his 1922 brief essay “Medusa’s Head,” he interpreted the Gorgon’s terrifying face as a reflection of the fear of castration aroused in young boys at the sight of female genitalia and read the serpents in Medusa’s hair as phallic symbols that mitigate this fear, thus affirming the male observer’s masculinity.32 Sensual overtones permeate Gianni Versace’s contemporary recasting of the beautiful Medusa as the highly recognizable logo of Versace. The

33. Benedetto Pistrucci (Italian, 1783– 1855). Cameo with the head of Medusa, 1840–50; mount ca. 1860. Red jasper mounted in gold with white enamel, (in setting) 2 ⅝ x 2 ⅝ in. (6.8 x 6.8 cm).

Purchase, Assunta Sommella Peluso, Ada Peluso, and Romano I. Peluso Gift, in memory of Ignazio Peluso, 2003 (2003.431) 34. Firm of Castellani. Brooch with the head of Medusa. Italy, before 1888.

Glass micromosaic and gold, 1 ½ x 2 ⅞ in. (3.8 x 7.1 cm). Gift of Jacqueline Loewe Fowler, 2007 (2007.299.1) 35. Medusa mask. French, late 18th– early 19th century. Gilt bronze, 4 ⅜ x 5 ⅜ x 1 ⅜ in. (11.1 x 13.7 x 3.5 cm). Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1906 (07.225.510.255) 36. Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (Italian, 1571–1610). Head of Medusa, ca. 1598. Oil on canvas, 23 ⅝ x 21 ⅝ in.

(60 x 55 cm). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

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Italian fashion designer, whose work brims with references to classical antiquity, viewed Medusa as his muse and alter ego.33 In a 1996 interview, Versace explained his choice of Medusa as his logo: “Sense of history, classicism. Medusa means seduction . . . a dangerous attraction.” 34 In his provocative, sexually aggressive “Bondage” collection of Autumn/Winter 1992–93, which featured fetishistic black leather skins and straps, he incorporated gold metal buttons decorated with the Medusa’s face in every design (fig. 38).

Medusa is represented in the likeness of Kate Moss, the British fashion model, in Frank Moore’s 1997 oil painting To Die For, commissioned by Gianni Versace but completed after the designer’s murder in the summer of 1997 (fig. 37).

Medusa’s severed head lies on a bloodstained

marble floor next to a shattered bottle of Gucci’s perfume Envy, a spool, and a Polaroid photo that shows the moment of the decapitation. Caught in her twisted, snaky tresses are a dollar bill and a dead white mouse, resembling those used in lab experiments. The painting’s mirror frame implicates the viewer in a play of reflected identity and vanity. A poignant allegory of the complex relationship of fashion and art, the painting came to symbolize the perils of the high-fashion industry and the violence against two Italian fashion icons whose lives ended tragically (Maurizio Gucci was killed in 1995 by a hit man hired by his ex-wife).

Phrases such as “dressed to kill,” “drop-dead ­gorgeous,” or “killer smile” echo this notion of glamorous beauty as a destructive force in contemporary popular culture.

37. Frank Moore (American, 1953–2002).

To Die For, 1997. Oil on canvas on featherboard with mirror frame, 27 ¾ x 61 ⅝ in. (70.5 x 156.5 cm). The Gesso Foundation / The Estate of Frank Moore, Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York

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38. Gianni Versace (Italian, 1946–1997).

Dress, autumn/winter 1992–93. Wool/silk blend, leather, and metal, L. (at center back) 37 in. (94 cm). Gift of Barbara Rochelle Kaplan, 2004 (2004.65.1)

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Sphinxes: Tomb Guardians and Deadly Riddles The sphinx, a mythological creature with a lion’s body and a human head, originated in Egypt and was known from the Bronze Age on in various forms throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The Greeks represented it as a winged lioness with a woman’s head and often carved its image on stone funerary monuments. Statues of sphinxes flanked the entrance of tombs or were placed on top of funerary stelae that served as grave markers.

Along with Gorgons and sirens, tomb sphinxes functioned as watchdogs to guard against and punish those who would disturb the dead. A pair of heraldic sphinxes crowns a late fifth-century b.c. funerary stele from Cyprus noted for its polychromy (fig. 39). Their femininity is emphasized by necklaces and elaborate diadems worn

on their elegantly coiffed long hair (see detail on inside back cover).

Sphinxes, Gorgons, and sirens were often integrated into bronze or terracotta vessels and implements. An Archaic sphinx figure with a single feline paw supported a shallow basin ­ (lekanis), a type of vessel that contained water and was frequently placed at the entrance of sanctuaries (fig. 40). A crouching sphinx with outspread wings is perfectly blended into the shape of a semi-cylindrical terracotta stand, one of a unique pair of vessels produced by an Athenian pottery workshop for the export market (fig. 41). Placed above the vessel’s tall stem, as if perched on a column, the sphinx peers down, with an enigmatic Archaic smile animating her face.35 A more

39. Funerary stele surmounted by two sphinxes. Cypriot, Classical, late 5th or early 4th century b.c.

Limestone, 34 ¾ x 27 x 5 ½ in. (88.2 x 68.5 x 14 cm). The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76 (74.51.2499) 28

40. Foot in the form of a sphinx.

Greek, Archaic, ca. 600 b.c.

Bronze, 10 ⅞ x 8 x 6 ½ in. (27.6 x 20.3 x 16.5 cm). Gift from the family of Howard J. Barnet, in his memory, 2000 (2000.660)

41. Stand with two sphinxes. Greek, Attic, Archaic, red-figure, ca. 520 b.c.

Terracotta, H. 10 ¼ in. (26 cm). Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norbert Schimmel, 1980 (1980.537) 42. Lekythos (oil flask) in the form of a sphinx. Greek (Attic), Late Classical, ca. 380–360 b.c.

Terracotta (polychrome, gilded), H. 5 ⅝ in. (14.3 cm). Rogers Fund, 1906 (06.1021.180) 29

43. Pendant with a double-bodied sphinx.

Greek (Cypriot), Classical, 5th–4th century b.c. Gold, 1 ⅛ x ¾ in. (3 x 2 cm).

The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76 (74.51.3382)

44. Earring with a sphinx. Greek, Late Classical or Hellenistic, 4th–3rd century b.c.

Gold, 2 ¾ x 1 ⅛ in. (7 x 3 cm). Gift of Christos G. Bastis, in honor of Philippe de Montebello, 1995 (1995.539.6)

benign and dainty sphinx, brightly painted and gilded, forms the body of a late Classical terracotta lekythos (fig. 42), one of many plastic (molded) vessels deposited as offerings at sanctuaries and tombs. Like Gorgons, sphinxes were widely used in jewelry, often embellishing pendants (fig. 43) or earrings (fig. 44). They were also struck on coins. With remarkable consistency, a sphinx appears on the obverse of coinage from the island of Chios from the sixth century b.c. to the late third century a.d. (fig. 45).

In the Hellenistic period, sphinxes continued to be employed on funerary monuments but were relegated to architectural ornamentation, as in the case of Tarentine funerary naiskoi (small temples), where they are often carved in crisp detail on limestone capitals (fig. 46). In the Roman world, the image of the sphinx maintained its sepulchral function, appearing on funerary altars, urns, and sarcophagi. At the same time, images of sphinxes became increasingly decorative, used frequently to adorn furniture and furnishings, especially table legs and candelabra. They were 30

45. Didrachm with a sphinx and wine amphora on obverse. Greek (Chios), Classical, 490–480 b.c. Silver, Wt. 7.83 g.

American Numismatic Society, New York; Bequest of W. Gedney Beatty (ANS 1941.153.837)

also part of the decoration of marble figural capitals of elaborate public buildings (fig. 47), similar to the ones recorded by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) in his engravings from the area of the Villa Borghese in Rome, as well as the mosaics and frescoes of Roman villas and houses.

Many late Archaic and Classical vases show a sphinx chasing a fleeing man or clutching him as prey (fig. 48). Sometimes the addition of an altar and column identifies the location as a sanctuary (fig. 49). In these scenes, the sphinx combines the role of the late Bronze Age death demon Ker, who snatched the corpses of dead warriors in battle, with that of a lover who passionately pursues handsome youths only to rip them apart.36 It is not always clear whether these sphinxes are generic representations of a death demon or refer specifically to the famous Theban sphinx of the Oedipus legend.37 According to the Oedipus myth, a deadly sphinx plagued Thebes by pillaging the countryside and chanting a riddle while seated on Mount Phicium, devouring anyone who gave the wrong answer.

46. Capital from a funerary naiskos with a double-bodied sphinx. Greek (South Italian, Tarentine), Early Hellenistic, late 4th–3rd century b.c.

Limestone, 7 ⅛ x 13 in. (18.1 x 33 cm).

Gift of the Aboutaam Family, 1995 (1995.95) 47. Sphinx from a figural capital.

Roman, Imperial, 1st–2nd century a.d. Marble, 14 ⅝ x 12 ⅝ x 5 in. (37 x 32.1 x 12.7 cm). Collection of Andrés A. Mata

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48. Kylix: Little Master cup (drinking cup), with a sphinx standing over a nude man. Greek (Attic), Archaic, black-figure, ca. 565–550 b.c.

Terracotta, H. 6 ⅝ in. (16.8 cm), Diam. 9 ⅞ in. (25.1 cm). Rogers Fund, 1903 (03.24.31) 49. Kantharos (drinking cup with high handles), with a sphinx seizing a Theban youth. Greek (Attic), Classical, red-figure, late 5th century b.c.

Terracotta, H. 8 ½ in. (21.5 cm), Diam. of mouth 4 ¾ in. (12.1 cm). Rogers Fund, 1921 (21.88.64) 50. Statue group with a sphinx attacking a Theban youth (reconstruction). Roman, 1st half of the 2nd century a.d., adaptation of a Greek original of ca. 430 b.c. Graywacke, H. (with plinth) 29 ½ in. (75 cm), L. of wing end 43 ¼ in. (110 cm), L. of rock 33 ½ in. (85 cm). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (I 1536)

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The riddle was this: what is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-­ footed and three-footed? (Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library 3.5.8). The kingdom of Thebes and Queen Jocasta’s hand in marriage were proclaimed as rewards for the one who solved the riddle. By the time Oedipus arrived in Thebes, many men had already failed and perished, but he confronted the sphinx and gave the correct answer: it is man, who crawls as a baby, walks as an adult, and then uses a cane in old age. Oedipus saved Thebes, and the sphinx committed suicide.

In Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex, solving the riddle not only showcases Oedipus’ superior intelligence but also sets in motion the hero’s downfall, with his discovery of his true identity as the man who killed his father, King Laius of Thebes, and his realization that he has married his own mother, Queen Jocasta. The sphinx episode is illustrative of the folktale theme of a hero

who wins a bride by slaying a monster,38 but here his quest has a cruel irony: the brightest of men is a monster through ignorance. Although the hero’s deductive reasoning helps him escape from the sphinx’s cunning trap, it cannot ultimately save him from his tragic fate.

The image of the ravenous, man-eating sphinx finds its most dramatic expression in a pair of Roman statue groups from Ephesus sculpted in dark graywacke, each depicting a sphinx attacking a youth.39 The ingenious composition, seen in the reconstructed group in Vienna (fig. 50), masterfully captures the tension between eroticism and violence. The sphinx has both fully developed female breasts and animal teats—a combination common in Roman art—and a beautiful face framed by long, wavy locks of hair. She claws the breast and feet of a defenseless youth, whose parted lips express the pain of his torn flesh. The statue groups are considered adaptations of the

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scenes of Theban youths being ravished by sphinxes from the colossal cult statue of Zeus at Olympia made by Pheidias in the late 430s b.c.40 The theme of the erotic, ravishing sphinx (sphinx amoureuse) was explored anew by late nineteenth-century Symbolist artists, who frequently used figures and creatures from Greek myth or biblical stories to populate their mysterious, dreamlike worlds. In their works, the semi-­ human sphinx often embodies an enigmatic fem­ininity—attractive and seductive, but base, instinct-driven, and destructive—set against the figure of Oedipus, the man of reason, whose ­superior intellect triumphs over the monster’s savagery.41 51. Gustave Moreau (French, 1826– 1898). Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1864.

Oil on canvas, 81 ¼ x 41 ¼ in. (206.4 x 104.8 cm). Bequest of William H. Herriman, 1920 (21.134.1) 34

The Oedipus episode is highly eroticized in Gustave Moreau’s Oedipus and the Sphinx (fig. 51), inspired by the 1808 painting (Musée du Louvre, Paris) of the same title by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867). Ingres painted only the front half of a feminine sphinx, noble but menacing, in an ominous, cavernous landscape. She paws at Oedipus, who calmly points at himself as the answer to her riddle: man. In contrast, the sphinx takes center stage in Moreau’s painting, where she appears highly feminized but rather insipid, clawing Oedipus’ chest and genitals. The monster’s long-standing ferocity is evident from the crumbling skeleton and a cadaver’s arm and foot visible at bottom. The two figures’ postures and locked gaze obscure the expected outcome of Oedipus’ victory and the sphinx’s ultimate demise.

The Symbolists revived the ancient dualism of body and soul, good and evil, and sensual beauty and spiritual beauty, and it is in these opposing terms that Moreau described his painting: “Man finds himself in the presence of the eternal enigma. She clutches him in an embrace with her terrible claws. . . . She is the earthly chimera, vile as all matter and attractive nonetheless. . . . But the strong and firm soul defies the monster’s bestialities . . . having trampled her under his feet.” 42 The enduring appeal of the sphinx as metaphor is demonstrated by Kara Walker’s 2014 public art installation in the defunct (now demolished) Domino Sugar Refinery, in Brooklyn (fig. 52). The colossal, sugar-coated white sculpture represents a sphinxlike creature wearing a mammy’s kerchief with naked breasts and exposed, gigantic vulva. A powerful political and racially charged symbol of the legacy of the sugar and slave trade, the sphinx pays homage to the enslaved men and women who endured brutality, exploitation, and sexual violence in American society.

52. Kara Walker (American, born 1969). A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of

the Domino Sugar Refining Plant, 2014. Installation at Domino Sugar Refinery, Brooklyn, 2014. Sphinx: Polystyrene foam and sugar, approx.

35.5 x 26 x 75.5 ft. (10.8 x 7.9 x 23 m).

A Project of Creative Time, New York

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53. Stamnos (jar) with Odysseus and the sirens. Attributed to the Siren Painter (name vase). Greek (Attic), red-figure, 480–470 b.c. Terracotta, H. 13 ⅜ in.

(34 cm), Diam. 15 in. (38 cm). British Museum, London (1843.1103.31)

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The Sirens: Bird-Women and Fatal Songs In myth, the sirens were singing maidens who lured mariners to their deaths with their melodious, enchanting song. They are best known from their encounter with Odysseus and his companions in Homer’s Odyssey (12.39–54, 165– 200). The sorceress Circe warns Odysseus that if he hears the singing of the sirens, he will never return home, for they sit in a meadow, surrounded by a great heap of men’s bones covered with moldering flesh, and fatally beguile men with the sweetness of their song. The sirens’ destiny, determined by an oracle, was to live only until a mortal could survive their deadly song.

Odysseus sealed the sirens’ end when he was able to hear their song by ordering his men to bind him to the mast of his ship and to put wax in their ears. As a result the sirens drowned themselves (fig. 53).43 Odysseus was not the first, however, to resist their musical call. Before him, the Argonauts had managed to pass by the island

54. Statuette of a siren. Greek, Archaic, ca. 550–500 b.c. Terracotta, 8 ¼ x 9 ½ x 5 in.

(21 x 24.1 x 12.7 cm). Purchase, Renée E. and Robert A. Belfer Gift, 2000 (2000.276)

of the sirens safely by having Orpheus play his lyre louder than their singing.

Homer does not describe the physical appearance of the sirens, but in Greek art their form was inspired by Near Eastern and Egyptian models such as the ba-bird, and they were represented as hybrid creatures with a human head and the body and claws of a bird of prey. In the Archaic period they were shown armless (fig. 54), and their gender was still ambiguous, since they were sometimes depicted bearded (fig. 55). By the fifth century b.c., however, the beard had disappeared, and sirens were represented only as females. A frontal siren perches atop an early Classical bronze mirror in The Met collection with a support in the form of a young, peplos-clad woman, one of the finest surviving examples of the type.44 The siren’s face and coiffure mirror those of the young maiden below, but her outstretched wings and pronounced claws add a menacing note to

55. Detail of a tripod kothon (vessel for perfumed oil) with a bearded siren.

Attributed to the Group of the Boeotian Dancers. Greek (Boeotian), Archaic, blackfigure, mid-6th century b.c. Terracotta, H. 6 ½ in. (16.5 cm), Diam. 7 ⅛ in. (18.1 cm).

Fletcher Fund, 1960 (60.11.10) 37

56. Miniature squat lekythos (oil flask) with a singing siren. Greek (Attic), Classical, red-figure, mid-5th century b.c. Terracotta, H. 3 ⅜ in. (8.5 cm). Rogers Fund, 1941 (41.162.123) 57. Kylix (drinking cup) with sirens playing music. Greek (Boeotian), Classical, blackfigure, early 5th century b.c.

Terracotta, H. 3 ⅛ in. (8 cm), Diam. 9 ⅜ in. (23.7 cm). Gift of Ernest Brummer, 1957 (57.12.5)

the composition. From the fifth century b.c. on, sirens progressively transitioned to avian-bodied females with fully developed human chest and arms, the latter being essential to their portrayal as musicians. Sometimes they are shown singing (fig. 56), but most often they play a variety of instruments, including the double flute, lyre, krotala (clappers) (fig. 57), and kithara (fig. 58). In late Classical art the addition of female breasts highlights their femininity, which is further enhanced by the jewelry they wear—including diadems, earrings, and necklaces—and the objects they carry, such as mirrors, fillets, and wreaths (fig. 59).

As sirens’ appearance changed over time, so did their mood and symbolism.

58. Earring with a siren playing the kithara (lyre). Greek, Classical, mid-4th century b.c.

Gold, H. 1 ¾ in. (4.4 cm). Rogers Fund, 1908 (08.258.49) 59. Stemless kylix (drinking cup) with a siren. Greek (South Italian, Paestan), Classical, late 4th century b.c. Terracotta, H. 2 in. (5 cm), Diam. of bowl 5 ⅛ in. (13 cm). Rogers Fund, 1989 (1989.11.12)

Although sirens had been connected with death since Homer’s Odyssey (late eighth century b.c.), their broader association with the Underworld dates back to at least the fifth century b.c., when they were believed to join in mourners’ lamentations. In Euripides’ Helen (167–75) they are the winged virgin daughters of Gaia (Earth), whom grieving Helen calls upon in her woes, while in Plato (Cratylus 403d–e) even the sirens are enchanted by the beautiful words of Hades, god of the Underworld, and are unwilling to leave him. According to a later tradition, the sirens were originally handmaidens of the goddess Persephone, who were transformed into birds after the latter’s ­abduction by Hades. Their transformation is explained in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

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The theme of the sad, beautiful (5.552–63): after they searched in 60. Funerary statue of a siren.

Greek (Attic), Late Classical, siren is rendered in a strikingly vain for Persephone on land, the ca. 370 b.c. Pentelic marble, imaginative manner by Raoul Dufy gods granted their wish to have H. 32 ⅝ in. (83 cm). National Archaeological Museum, Athens in his woodcut Les sirènes, one of wings to fly over the sea while retainthirty illustrations he created for ing their human youthful faces and (774) Guillaume Apollinaire’s Le Bestiaire beautiful voices. This story was later 61. Raoul Dufy (French, 1877– 1953).

Sirens (Les sirènes), 1910. ou Cortège d’Orphée, published in viewed as a prelude to the sirens’ Woodcut; block, 8 x 7 ⅝ in. (20.2 x 1911 (fig. 61). The two sirens flying encounter with Odysseus (Pseudo- 19.4 cm). Harris Brisbane Dick over the sea are envisioned as Hyginus, Fabulae 141).

Fund, 1926 (26.92.1) beautiful women naked from the On Attic grave stelae and other 62. Kylix (drinking cup) with Scylla. waist up with long, luxuriant hair, funerary monuments, the sirens’ Greek, Classical, late 5th century b.c.

Gilt silver, W. 8 ⅞ in. arms like bear’s forelegs, and fish enchanting song turns into a lament.

They are portrayed as empathetic (22.4 cm), H. 1 ¾ in. (4.4 cm). Gift of tails: an intermediate type between Mary and Michael Jaharis, in honor classical bird-women and postclasmourners, assuming the typical ges- of Thomas P. Campbell, 2015 (2015.260.1) sical representations of the sirens tures performed during the dirge: as mermaids. In Apollinaire’s beating one’s chest and pulling one’s hair. During the fourth century b.c., funerary accompanying quatrain, the nocturnal wails of statues of beautiful, grief-stricken sirens, often the sirens become a metaphor for the poet’s— playing lyre music, were placed at the grave to and modern man’s—existential ennui. The curguarantee an eternal lament for the deceased rent usage of the word siren to describe the (fig. 60).45 Their melodious song was believed to piercing sound of alarms (which dates from offer consolation to the mourning ­relatives of the World War I) derives from the deadly danger of dead by expressing hope for a blissful afterlife. the mythological creatures.

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The Beautiful Scylla During Odysseus’s arduous return home after the Trojan War, he and his crew also encountered Scylla (Odyssey 12.85–100, 223–61), a sea monster who, together with Charybdis, a giant whirlpool, terrorized ancient sailors. Homer tells us that Scylla dwelled in a fog-bound cave high on a cliff and yelped like a newborn puppy (skylax). A terrifying monster even to the gods, she had twelve flexible legs and six long necks with ghastly

heads equipped with three rows of thick teeth, full of “black death,” with which she snatched and devoured sailors from ships sailing by her cave. Nobody escaped Scylla unscathed: six of Odysseus’s shipmates fell prey to her.

According to Ovid (Metamorphoses 13.730–41; 14.40–74), Scylla was once a beautiful virgin sought after by many men. The envious Circe poisoned Scylla’s favorite bathing sea pool, thus 41

transforming her into a monster whose body is girdled by a pack of barking dogs. Stripped of her sexuality and condemned to a life of solitude, Scylla sent countless sailors to the depths of the sea.

The earliest artistic representations of Scylla come from the fifth century b.c. They show her as a tripartite hybrid with the upper body of an alluring woman, a fishy tail, and foreparts of barking dogs emerging at the hip. Grasping shipwreck debris such as broken oars and rudders, she is poised to attack her next unsuspecting victims.

On the tondo of a magnificent gilt-silver kylix of the late fifth century b.c., Scylla stirs up the sea beneath her, with her hair and dress caught in the wind and her dogs ready to snap at the ­swimming fish (fig. 62). A bare-breasted Scylla adorns a terracotta plaque with glass inlays (fig. 63), of a type, often gilded, used on the funerary klinai (couches) of late Classical and Hellenistic tombs.

42

Ancient geographers imagined Scylla living off the Straits of Messina along the Sicilian coast. She was a popular subject on pottery from Canosa, in southern Italy, which often combines sculpted and painted images. On an askos in The Met collection, a pair of Scyllae with arms raised and dogs poised to pounce rise from the body of the vessel, which also displays a partly preserved sea creature painted in rich blue and pink (fig. 64).

Modern scholars interpret the name Scylla semantically as a symbol uniting the three ­concepts of sea, dog, and woman that was articulated differently across media and periods.46 Scylla expresses anxieties about the navigational hazards of the sea, a generalized fear of being devoured, and male dread of female lust and aggression or their opposite, untamed virginity. The beautiful Scylla is yet another instance of an ancient femme fatale that anticipates the conceit of the seductive but threatening woman that emerged in the late nineteenth century.

63. Plaque with Scylla. Greek (South Italian), Hellenistic, late 4th century b.c. Terracotta and glass, L. 5 ¾ in. (14.5 cm). Purchase, Sandra Brue Gift, 1998 (1998.210.1, .2)

64. Askos (flask with a handle over the top) with a pair of Scyllae. Greek (South Italian, Canosan), Hellenistic, 3rd century b.c.

Terracotta, H. 17 ⅜ in. (44.2 cm), Diam. 16 in.

(40.7 cm). Gift of Mrs. Frederic H. Betts, 1911 (11.43)

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The Nineteenth-Century Femme Fatale From about 1870 to 1910, the trope of the “fatal woman,” or femme fatale (a term that was not in use before the early twentieth century), became one of the main themes in the art and literature of the Aesthetes, Decadents, and, above all, the Symbolists. Concerning themselves with the inner realm and the expression of ideas and emotions more than external objective reality, the Symbolists employed a limited number of themes and archetypal images to represent personal truth and to find spiritual value in artistic creation.47 Cautioning of the danger for men, and artists especially, of succumbing to a woman’s sexual allure, they often portrayed women

65. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British, 1828–1882). Lady Lilith, 1867.

Watercolor and gouache on paper, 20 ¼ x 17 ⅜ in. (51.3 x 44 cm). Rogers Fund, 1908 (08.162.1) 66. Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944). The Sin II (Woman with Red Hair and Green Eyes), 1902.

Lithograph; plate, 27 ⅜ x 15 ¾ in.

(69.5 x 40 cm). Gift of Philip and Lynn Strauss, 1984 (1984.1167)

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as predatory and destructive figures. Called “grim ladies” or “earthly chimeras” by some contemporary writers, these femmes fatales are described by art historian Reinhold Heller as a fusion of “the sensual charm of women with the intel­lectual capabilities of men into a sterile union capable only of generating death.” 48 The characteristics that make up the image of the femme fatale center on beauty, lust, independence, and ­self-assurance, as she came to symbolize not only male desire but also male fears and anxieties about the educated, nonmaternal, sexually emancipated modern woman. It is no coincidence that its creation corresponded with

the expanding role of women in public life and their demands for equality at the beginning of the feminist movement in late n ­ ineteenth-century Europe.

The idea of the seductive but destructive woman had already featured prominently in Romantic poetry, which often used mythical or biblical female figures as paradigms. For example, Lilith, a female night demon and Adam’s first, insubordinate wife in Jewish folklore, became enmeshed with Lamia, the fearsome baby snatcher of Greek myth, in John Keats’s narrative poem Lamia (1819).49 The Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti created his version of Lilith as an emasculating sensual beauty in his 1867 oil painting Lady Lilith, which he replicated in watercolor (fig. 65). A beautiful young woman, modeled on Rossetti’s mistress Fanny Cornforth Hughes, is portrayed seated in her boudoir looking self-absorbedly into a mirror as she combs her long, red-gold hair. In a handwritten label attached to the watercolor’s original frame, Rossetti quotes from the Walpurgis Night scene of Goethe’s Faust (4206–11), when Lilith makes her sole brief appearance and Mephistopheles warns Faust of Lilith’s dangerous beauty, especially her ensnaring hair: “Beware of her fair hair, for she excels / All women in the magic of her locks; / And when she winds them round a young man’s neck, / She will not ever set him free again.” 50 As in the case of Medusa, a woman’s threatening nature is manifested in her hair and gaze.

Long, flowing red hair is a recurring element of the iconography of the femme fatale. In contrast to Rossetti’s figure engaged in narcissistic contemplation, the seductive, bare-breasted woman with long, disheveled red locks and eerie emerald-green eyes in Edvard Munch’s masterful print The Sin (Woman with Red Hair and Green Eyes) looks out with a blank expression (fig. 66).

Although not directed at the viewer, her hypnotic, alien stare is nonetheless reminiscent of Medusa’s petrifying gaze. Munch’s erotic icon

floats in the void, as if frozen outside of time, reflecting his belief that love is destined to end in rejection and isolation and that submitting to lust and carnal passion would signal the artist’s spiritual death.

Progressing from the magnificently monstrous to the terrifyingly beautiful, female hybrids represent a conflicting view of femininity, one that is seemingly alluring but with a threatening or sinister underside. They are situated in the uncomfortable space between attraction and desire, on the one hand, and repulsion and anxiety on the other. The process of their feminization was a hallmark of the mythical and artistic imagination of the Classical period, when Greek artists humanized and beautified the most repugnant and hideous of all, the Gorgon Medusa. Much like Medusa’s gaze, the power of their art is transformative and enduring.

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Myths: A Guide to the Classical Stories (London: Thames & Hudson, 2010), pp. 126–28. On the 1. For the iconography of individual figures, stages of the heroic quest, see Robert A. Segal et al., In Quest of the Hero (Princeton, N.J.: see the encyclopedic entries in the Lexicon Princeton University Press, 1990).

Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), 10. Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by 20 vols. (Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1981–2009), vol. 4, pt. 1, s.v. “Gorgo, Gorgones,” pp. 285–330 Frank Justus Miller, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library, 42 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard (Ingrid Krauskopf ), and s.v. “Gorgones Romanae,” pp. 345–62 (Orazio Paoletti), vol. 8, University Press, 1916), vol. 1, p. 233.

11. In W[ilhelm] H. Roscher, Ausführliches illus. vol. 4, pt. 2, pp. 163–87, 195–207; pt. 1, s.v.

Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, “Seirenes,” pp. 1093–104 (Eva Hofstetter and 10 vols. (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1884–93), Ingrid Krauskopf ), s.v. “Skylla I,” pp. 1137–45 (Marie-Odile Jentel), s.v. “Sphinx,” pp. 1149–74 vol. 1, pt. 2, s.v. “Gorgones und Gorgo,” cols. 1695, 1727.

(Nota Kourou et al.), illus. vol. 8, pt. 2, 12. See, for example, Kathryn Topper, pp. 734–44, 784–92, 794–817.

“Perseus, the Maiden Medusa, and the 2. This topic has not been previously Imagery of Abduction,” Hesperia 76 (2007), presented. Despoina Tsiafakis, “‘PEDWRA’: pp. 73–105. Topper claims that the appearance Fabulous Creatures and/or Demons of of the beautiful Medusa in fifth-century b.c.

Death?,” in The Centaur’s Smile: The Human Animal in Early Greek Art, by J. Michael Padgett art is determined by narrative context rather than chronology. et al., exh. cat. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 13. Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Death in the Eyes: University Art Museum, 2003), pp. 72–90, Gorgo, Figure of the Other,” in Mortals and 98–102, explores the female hybrids in early Immortals: Collected Essays, edited by Froma I. Greek art. On sirens from antiquity to the Zeitlin (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University present, see Eva Hofstetter et al., Vorsicht Press, 1991), pp. 111–38.

Lebensgefahr!: Sirenen, Nixen, Meerjungfrauen in 14. Konrad Schauenburg, Perseus in der der Kunst seit der Antike, exh. cat. (Stendal: Kunst des Altertums (Bonn: R. Habelt, 1960), Winckelmann Museum; Ruhpolding: Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen, 2013). On the iconogra- pp. 130–31.

15. Pindar, Olympian Odes; Pythian Odes, phy of the sphinx through time, see Heinz Demisch, Die Sphinx: Geschichte ihrer Darstellung edited and translated by William H. Race, Loeb Classical Library, 56 (Cambridge, Mass.: von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 388–96.

Urachhaus, 1977).

16. See the discussion by Topper, “Perseus, 3. For a field guide to the world’s monsters the Maiden Medusa, and the Imagery of and their role in the human psyche, society, Abduction,” pp. 93, 102. and culture, see David D. Gilmore, Monsters: 17. See, for example, the splendid wall Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts and All Manner of painting with Perseus and Andromeda from Imaginary Terrors (Philadelphia: University of the Imperial villa of Agrippa Postumus at Pennsylvania Press, 2003).

4. Alternatively, the sirens were thought to Boscotrecase in the Museum’s collection be the offspring of the river god Acheloos and (20.192.16).

18. Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux, “In the one of the Muses, a genealogy that explains Mirror of the Mask,” in A City of Images: their association with music.

Iconography and Society in Ancient Greece, by 5. Susan Woodford, Images of Myths in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge and New York: Claude Bérard et al. (Princeton, N.J.: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 134, 133. Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 159.

19. Stephen R. Wilk, Medusa: Solving the 6. Umberto Eco, ed. and annot., History of Beauty (2002; New York: Rizzoli International, Mystery of the Gorgon (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 186–88.

2004), p. 41.

20. J[ohann] W[olfgang von] Goethe, 7. Ibid., p. 133.

Italian Journey (1786–1788), translated by 8. See, for example, Werner Hofmann W[ystan] H[ugh] Auden and Elizabeth Mayer et al., Zauber der Medusa: Europäische (London: Pantheon Books, 1962), p. 140 Manierismen, exh. cat. (Vienna: Wiener (December 25, 1786 entry) and p. 362 (July 29, Künstlerhaus; Löcker, 1987), which traces 1787 entry) respectively.

Medusa’s reception in Western art from the 21. As proposed by Ernst Buschor, Medusa sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Rondanini (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1958), 9. Philip Matyszak, The Greek and Roman notes

46

which remains the main study on the subject.

Janer Danforth Belson, “The Medusa Rondanini: A New Look,” American Journal of Archaeology 84, no. 3 (July 1980), pp. 373–78, pl. 48, summarizes the various theories and argues that the Rondanini copies a classicizing Hellenistic work instead, perhaps the Gorgoneion on the gilt-bronze aegis dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (r. 175–164 b.c.).

22. Likewise Karl Schefold and Franz Jung, Die Urkönige, Perseus, Bellerophon, Herakles und Theseus in der klassischen und hellenistischen Kunst (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 1988), p. 101.

23. It probably adorned a large ceremonial chariot used in processions (a currus triumphalis).

The side loops are for the straps that connected the yokes of the horses with the pole, and the hooks above and below are for fastening the harness.

24. Found in Via Ardeatina, the mosaic is now displayed in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Baths of Diocletian. See the forth­ coming publication by Federica Rinaldi and F. Turchetta, “Roma, Suburbio. Loc. S. Palomba, via Fisciano. Mosaico con Medusa e temi dionisiaci,” in Atti del XXIII Colloquio dell’Asso­ ciazione Italiana per lo Studio e la Conservazione del Mosaico—AISCOM (Narni, 15–18 marzo 2017), edited by Claudia Angelelli and Federica Rinaldi (Rome: AISCOM, 2018), pp. 313–26.

25. The Perseus Fresco decorates the east wall of room 30, one of the diaetae of the villa, dated about a.d. 54–68. See Giovanna Bonifacio and Anna Maria Sodo, Stabiae: Guida archeologica alle ville (Castellammare di Stabia: N. Longobardi, 2001), pp. 65–68.

26. Anna Marguerite McCann, Roman Sarcophagi in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978), p. 142.

27. Sarcophagus with garlands. Roman, Severan, a.d. 200–225. Marble, 53 x 88 in. (134.6 x 223.5 cm). Gift of Abdo Debbas, 1870 (70.1).

28. Dimitris Plantzos, Hellenistic Engraved Gems (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 88–89.

29. It is perhaps the work of the Italian engraver Luigi Saulini, who signed many other black and white cameos in the Milton Weil Collection, which forms the core of the Museum’s European gemstone holdings.

30. James David Draper, “Cameo Appear­ ances,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 65, no. 4 (Spring 2008), p. 33.

31. See Louis Marin, “The Medusa Head as Historical Painting,” in To Destroy Painting,

translated by Mett Hjort (1977; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 136–44.

32. Posthumously published in 1940. See Sigmund Freud, Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, edited by Philip Rieff (New York: Collier Books, 1963), pp. 212–13.

33. Michele Valerie Ronnick, “Versace’s Medusa: (Capita)lizing upon Classical Antiquity,” Helios 32, no. 2 (Fall 2005), pp. 173–81.

34. Gianni Versace, “Seduction,” in The Medusa Reader, edited by Garber and Vickers, p. 276.

35. Although the exact use of these stands is unknown, the presence of sphinxes points to a funerary function, perhaps to hold vegetal offerings. See Beth Cohen et al., The Colors of Clay: Special Techniques in Athenian Vases, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006), p. 257.

36. See Emily Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 69, 171–73.

37. On this long-standing scholarly debate, see Jean-Marc Moret, Oedipe, la sphinx et les thébains: Essai de mythologie iconographique (Rome: Institut suisse de Rome, 1985). Moret, p. 26, suggests that all sphinx images refer to the Oedipus myth.

38. Lowell Edmunds argues, contrary to the commonly accepted view, that the sphinx and the solving of the riddle are later

additions to the narrative of the Oedipus myth, intended to motivate the hero’s marriage to his mother; see Lowell Edmunds, The Sphinx in the Oedipus Legend (Königstein: Anton Hain, 1981).

39. The groups were found in fragmentary condition at the port gymnasium of Ephesus and date to the first half of the second century a.d. The numerous fragments are now dispersed between Vienna and London; see Maria Aurenhammer, Die Skulpturen von Ephesos: Bildwerke aus Stein, vol. 1, Idealplastik I (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990), pp. 178–81, no. 148, pls. 110–15.

40. This association is based on the groups’ scale and medium, which resembles ebony, one of the precious materials used in the throne of the cult statue.

41. Rosanna Lauriola, “Revivals of an Ancient Myth in Modern Art: Oedipus and the Episode of the Sphinx from Jean Auguste-​ Domenique Ingres to Michael Merck,” Trends in Classics 3, no. 1 (2011), pp. 154–94.

42. Julius Kaplan, Gustave Moreau, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1974), p. 142.

43. The earliest surviving literary reference to their fate is in Lycophron’s poem Alexandra (712–13), composed 196–90 b.c.

44. Mirror with a support in the form of a draped woman. Greek (Argive), Classical, mid-5th century b.c. Bronze, H. 15⅞ in.

(40.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of

Art, New York; Bequest of Walter C. Baker, 1971 (1972.118.78).

45. Nikolaos Kaltsas, Sculpture in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002), p. 181, no. 358.

46. Marianne Govers Hopman, Scylla: Myth, Metaphor, Paradox (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Hopman uses Scylla as a case study for exploring the semiotic puzzles raised by mythological names.

47. Reinhold Heller et al., The Earthly Chimera and the Femme Fatale: Fear of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Art, exh. cat. (Chicago: David and Alfred Smart Gallery, The University of Chicago, 1981).

48. Ibid., p. 11.

49. The chapter “La belle dame sans merci,” in Mario Praz’s The Romantic Agony, 2nd ed. (1933; London: Oxford University Press, 1951), pp. 187–286, constitutes the first extensive study of the concept of the fatal woman as a historical phenomenon. For a more recent, mostly art-historical treatment of the subject, see Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon (Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Pub. Co., 1983).

50. Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Scenes from the Faust of Goethe,” in The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Georg Edward Woodberry, Cambridge Edition (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1901), p. 545.

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Acknowledgments I am greatly indebted to Carlos Picón, former Curator in Charge of the Department of Greek and Roman Art, and Quincy Houghton, Deputy Director for Exhibitions, for the opportunity to organize this exhibition. I am equally grateful to Seán Hemingway, John A. and Carole O. Moran Acting Curator in Charge, for his enthusiastic support and guidance. A number of private and public lenders agreed to loan works from their collections, and I thank them all for their generosity: Andrés A. Mata; Hiram Carruthers Butler and Andrew Spindler-Roesle; the American Numismatic Society and its executive director, Ute Wartenberg Kagan; and one lender who wishes to remain anonymous. I also thank the Vlachos family, Diane Carol Brandt, and Jenny Boondas for their generous support.

At The Met, I was fortunate to benefit from the expertise of many colleagues from around the Museum. In the Department of Greek and Roman Art, Christopher S. Lightfoot, Curator, graciously offered his encouragement and advice and, along with Seán Hemingway, read early drafts of this Bulletin. Vital support and assistance were also provided by Fred A. Caruso, Debbie T. Kuo, John F. Morariu, Jr., Katherine Daniels, Melissa Sheinheit, Michael J. Baran, Maya Muratov, Jennifer S. Soupios, Sarah Szeliga, Joan R. Mertens, Sasha de Lotbiniere (our MuSe intern for 2017), and Sean P. Burrus (Bothmer Fellow, 2016–17).

I am indebted to many colleagues in other departments who were generous with loans, expertise, and assistance. In European Sculpture and Decorative Arts: Luke Syson, Iris and B. Gerald This publication is issued in conjunction with the exhibition “Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art,” on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from February 5, 2018, to January 6, 2019.

Cantor Chairman; Denise Allen; Daniëlle O. Kisluk-Grosheide, Henry R. Kravis Curator; and Denny Stone. In Drawings and Prints: Nadine M. Orenstein, Drue Heinz Curator in Charge; Constance McPhee; Allison Rudnick; Elizabeth Zanis; and David Del Gaizo. In The Costume Institute: Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge; Jessica Regan; and Joyce Fung. In Imaging: Barbara J. Bridgers, Paul H. Lachenauer, and Peter Zeray. In Digital: Austin Fisher, Paul Caro, Robin Schwab, Emily Sutter, and Sumi Hansen. In Objects Conservation: Dorothy H. Abramitis. In Paper Conservation: Marjorie Shelley, Sherman Fairchild Conservator in Charge; Marina Ruiz-Molina; and Rachel Mustalish. In Communications: Egle Žygas. In Buildings: Matthew Lytle. In Development: Jennifer M. Brown. In Education: Maricelle Robles and Marianna Siciliano. And in European Paintings: Alison R. Hokanson.

I deeply appreciate the professionalism of the entire exhibition team, especially Amy Bogansky, Fabiana Weinberg, Kamomi Solidum, Clint Ross Coller, Richard Lichte, and Briana Parker. In Publications and Editorial, I owe special thanks to Dale Tucker, Joanna Ekman, Paul Booth, Jenn Sherman, and Bethany Johns for their work on this exceptional Bulletin. For their help securing images of works in their respective institutions, I thank Dmitry Christov, Christine Kondoleon, Phoebe Segal, and Despina Ignatiadou. Only space constraints prevent me from acknowl­ edging the many others who helped in various ways. KK

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Mark Polizzotti, Publisher and Editor in Chief Gwen Roginsky, Associate Publisher and General Manager of Publications The exhibition is made possible by The Vlachos Family Dale Tucker, Editor of the Bulletin Fund and Diane Carol Brandt.

Joanna Ekman, Editor Paul Booth, Production Manager The accompanying Bulletin is made possible in part by Bethany Johns, Designer the Jenny Boondas Fund. The Met’s quarterly Bulletin Jenn Sherman, Image Acquisitions and Permissions program is supported in part by the Lila Acheson Wallace Penny Jones, Bibliographic Editor Fund for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, established by the cofounder of Reader’s Digest.

Typeset in Portrait and Fakt Separations by Professional Graphics, Inc., Rockford, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Winter 2018 Illinois Volume LXXV, Number 3 Printed in the United States of America Copyright © 2018 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Cover: detail of Chariot-pole finial with the head of Medusa, Roman, Imperial, 1st–2nd century a.d. (see fig. 23). Inside The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (ISSN 0026-1521) front cover: detail of Pelike (jar) with Perseus beheading the is published quarterly by The Metropolitan Museum sleeping Medusa, Greek (Attic), Classical, ca. 450–440 b.c. of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028-0198. (see fig. 8). Page 1: Carnelian intaglio with the sleeping Medusa, Periodicals postage paid at New York NY and additional Greek, Hellenistic, 3rd–1st century b.c. H. ⅞ in. (2.2 cm). mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Gift of Rupert L. Joseph, 1948 (48.12.4). Page 2: detail Membership Department, The Metropolitan Museum of of Benedetto Pistrucci, Cameo with the head of Medusa, Art Bulletin, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 100281840–50 (see fig. 33). Inside back cover: detail of Funerary 0198. Four weeks’ notice required for change of address. stele surmounted by two sphinxes, Cypriot, Classical, late The Bulletin is provided as a benefit to Museum members 5th or early 4th century b.c. (see fig. 39). Page 47: rollout and is available by subscription. Subscriptions $30.00 a view of Lekythos (oil flask) with Perseus escaping with the head year. Back issues available on microfilm from National of Medusa, Greek (Attic), Archaic, ca. 500 b.c. (see fig. 7).

Archive Publishing Company, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Back cover: Antonio Canova (Italian, 1757–1822), Perseus Arbor, MI 48106. Volumes I–XXXVII (1905–42) available with Head of Medusa, 1804–6. Marble, H. 95 ½ in. (242.6 cm).

Fletcher Fund, 1967 (67.110.1) as a clothbound reprint set or as individual yearly volumes from Ayer Company Publishers, Suite B-213, Photographs of works in the Metropolitan Museum’s 400 Bedford Street, Manchester, NH 03101, or from the collection are by the Imaging Department, The Metropolitan Museum, 66–26 Metropolitan Avenue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, unless otherwise noted.

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Additional credits: Courtesy of the American Numismatic Society: figs. 11, 45; Courtesy of Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence: fig. 36; © The Gesso Foundation / The Estate of Frank Moore, courtesy of Sperone Westwater, New York: fig. 37. © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/Archaeological Receipts Fund: fig. 60; Courtesy of KHM-Museumsverband: fig. 50; Courtesy of Samuel Magal: fig. 27; Image © Metropolitan Museum of Art: page 1; figs. 2–8, 10, 12a–c, 14–19, 21–24, 26, 28–35, 38–44, 46–49, 51, 54–59, 61–66; Image © Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo by Paul Lachenauer: inside front cover and fig. 13; Photograph © 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: fig. 1; Courtesy of National Museum of Rome, Baths of Diocletian: fig. 25; Courtesy of Staatliche Antiken-sammlungen und Glyptothek München, photo

by Renate Kühling: fig. 20; Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum, photo by Alexander Koksharov: fig. 9; © The Trustees of the British Museum: fig. 53; Artwork © Kara Walker, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, photo by Jason Wyche: fig. 52.

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Dangerous Beauty Medusa in Classical Art

the metropolitan museum of art bulletin winter 2018