The poet Hesiodwhom some historians consider the first Greek philosopher, was the first to write about jellyfishalong with his two sisters, This not and Euryale, forming the trio of the gorgons. Considered a chthonic monster (from the underworld), the myth relates that those who looked into her eyes were turned into stone. The most representative image of her was made more than two thousand years later by an Italian named Miguel Ángel Merisi, Caravaggioone of the great geniuses in the history of painting.
The Roman poet Ovid adds an interesting fact about its origin. In The Metamorphoses (8th century AD) maintains that she was a beautiful woman, with many suitors, and that after being raped by Poseidon In the temple of Athena, of which she was a priestess, the goddess stripped her of her hair to place the characteristic snakes on her. This exaltation of her beauty, however, was not new, she had already been portrayed by Pindar in the V ac
The point is that Medusa is most remembered for her monstrosity and mortality, which occurs when she was decapitated by Perseuswho used his head as a weapon so that Athena finally placed it on her shield, the aegis.
In Odyssey, Homer describes her as camping at the gates of Hades, on the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead, on the edge of what is visible and what vision cannot sustain. Placed equidistance between the order of which the Gods are the guarantors and chaos, reason and madness, its nature is to be impure, dual, ambivalent.
Its first aesthetic representations, at least those that survive, date from the 7th century BC, with vestiges on the pediment of the temples, on the shields, on domestic utensils such as a skiff, a ceramic vessel, which was a gorgoneion, an amulet. which induced horror by showing the head of the Gorgon, which is presented in the exhibition.
From Cresilassculptor from Greek antiquity, to artists such as Benvenuto Cellini, Sandro Botticelli, Pierre Paul Rubens, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Adele d’Affry, Auguste Rodin, Jean-Marc Nattier, Theodor van Thulden, Edward Burne-Jones either Franz Von Stuck, among others, have given life to this woman who lives between charm and terror. However, none is more recognizable than the one she made Caravaggioin 1597.
In the 1590s, Caravaggio was working in Rome and was already a recognized, conflictive artist, but his success among the clergy and the nobles was on the rise. In July 1597, Caravaggio and his partner Prospero Orsi They were involved in a crime that occurred near San Luigi de’ Francesi.
At that time, there was an unsolved case in which the disappearance of two objects was reported: a dark cloak and a small dagger, and a testimony from that time placed him as a suspect: “This painter is a strong young man… of thin black beard, bushy eyebrows and black eyes, who is dressed all in black, in a rather disorderly manner, with slightly worn black leggings, and who has a thick head. of hair, long on his forehead.”
As a result of his mysterious behavior, he was arrested several times and, in court, stated that he chose dark outfits to avoid attracting unnecessary attention. Without further evidence, he was released but he was arrested again in May 1598 for possession of a sword in public.
“I carry the sword by right because I am a painter of the Cardinal del Monte. I am at your service and live in your house. “I am registered on your household payroll,” he gave as an argument for his release. And Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte was an important figure of his time, who came from an aristocratic family with ancestry in the House of Bourbon. Furthermore, he was Caravaggio’s main patron.
Thus, it was the Cardinal who commissioned the work to be the figure of a ceremonial shield presented in 1601 to Ferdinand I de’ MediciGrand Duke of Tuscany.
The piece, which is in the Uffizi Gallery, is technically marvelous, a feat of perspective, because from the apparently convex surface of the shield the head of the Gorgon seems to be projected into space, so that the blood around his neck seems to fall to the ground.
There is some controversy about who was the model for Medusa, while some historians point to one of the prostitutes he used for his work, others claim that it is actually a self-portrait. The latter is difficult to determine because Caravaggio himself never made a painting of himself.
In fact, it is stated that the artist included himself in “The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula” (1609), which they claim is his last known painting, which is in the National Gallery in London and also in “David with the Head of Goliath” (1609-1610), in the Borghese Gallery. In fact, the only existing portrait of Caravaggio was drawn by Ottavio LeoniItalian Baroque painter and printmaker.
In the 38 years that he lived he was a unique, provocative artist, inhabited by the finest of techniques along with the most heretical of looks. A creator who could exude sensuality or brutality with the same hand; hated by the classics, loved by the young; quarrelsome and excessive egomaniac – he had to flee Rome for murder – but with a sense of survival to remake works that were rejected – which were many – and is, to this day, the axis of an eternal dispute in the history of art: Was he or was he not the father of chiaroscuro and, therefore, of the beginning of modern painting?
Medusa was characterized by several run-ins with the law. :
