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
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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,