Medusa's Revenge: not exactly a good idea

 

I don't know what's your impression of this piece of statuary by Luciano Garbati , recently installed across from New York courthouse. In a sense, times were ripe for something like that. Garbati was clearly trying to create a counter image to the Perseus one by Benvenuto Cellini, still standing in Florence.

Yet, I am not sure that the results are worth of praise. There is something wrong with the newer piece. For one thing, it lacks the plastic movement of Cellini's one. Somehow, Cellini embodied much more in his image than the simple action of butchery of beheading someone. Just think of the eerie fascination of Medusa's head, held by Perseus. Cellini's piece is the representation of a murder, sure, but there is much more to it: it is a whole mythological story compressed in a single piece. .

Instead, what Garbati's piece looks like is, indeed, a murder and little more. The figure is static, the man's head is meaningless, all what Medusa's expression conveys is a certain degree of anger. Justified, but, well, what's the sense of the whole piece? Personally, I am a big fan of the double X chromosome, but I don't think revenge is a virtue for anyone, not even for women.  

Beheading Women: From Cellini to ISIS

This is an image from Jim Jarmusch's recent movie "The Dead don't Die." A standard zombie movie, but well done and with some interesting quirks, one is the image above. When I saw it, my mind immediately went to Cellini's "Medusa," the piece of statuary still standing today in Florence after it was made in the mid-1500s. Maybe it is the source of inspiration for Jarmusch's scene.

Here we don't have a zombie hunter beheading an undead creature but the hero Perseus is doing something similar by beheading Medusa, supposed to be a female monster. I described Cellini's work in a previous post, but it was not Cellini who invented this theme. It is way more ancient than the Renaissance. It was common in antiquity.

Here is a fresco coming from a Roman villa showing a rather fat Perseus happy to have just beheaded the evil Medusa.

Just to show how common the theme was, here is a cameo, probably coming from early imperial Roman times, with another Perseus holding the head of Medusa in his hand. It is presently at the Getty museum.

And the theme is even more ancient than classic antiquity but, initially, it was more common to show just the head of Medusa or the act of beheading her, as in this relief said to have been made around 650 BCE

So, the idea of the hero triumphantly showing the severed head of a woman is relatively modern and it has something to do with what we call "civilization." It never was among the most popular themes of ancient art, but it surely had its space and a certain dignity that made it acceptable.

In relatively modern times, for instance, the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757- 1822) was probably inspired by Cellini when he reproposed the old theme, as you can see here:

About this piece, it must be said that Cellini remains an unequaled master and that Canova's interpretation of the scene is at best acceptable but has nothing of the inner power of Cellini's work. But so it goes: art is more often imitation than creation.

In our times, the idea that it is a heroic thing to behead a woman seems to have become unfashionable, fortunately. Surely, no one would propose a piece of statuary showing the severed head of a woman to stand in the central square of a city -- as we have in Florence with Cellini's Perseus. But the theme remains alive, it is just that the hero has been turned into the villain of horror movies and dark comics. Here is an example from the work of Johnny Craig.

And here is the same scene in "Scary Movie" (2000)

Many more images of this kind can be found on the Web, but the idea is not limited to fantasy. It is sometimes projected on people or groups whom we perceive as evil. Here is a photo that became viral on the Web.

It is said to depict an ISIS fighter who killed and beheaded a Kurdish female fighter. It is, most likely, a fake and the whole story is mostly fantasy. But it is curious how the theme recurs over and over. It is something deep in our collective mind, probably leading to nothing bad as long as it is fantasy, but in our times of fake news, the line between reality and fantasy is often blurred. And this is how we keep moving toward the future.

My paper on Cellini's "Perseus and medusa" accepted for publication

My paper titled "The myth of Medusa: Benvenuto Cellini and the “Loggia dei Lanzi” in Florence" has been accepted today for publication.  It will appear in a book titled “The Cnidaria, past, present and future. The world of Medusa and her sisters”, published by Springer and edited by Stefano Goffredo and Zvy Dubinsky.

My contribution to this book is about the mythological Medusa, even though the book is mainly dedicated to the biology of the creatures named 'Cnidaria', best known in everyday life as "Medusas" (even though not all Cnidaria are Medusas). In any case, they are the kind of creatures you don't want to meet when you swim in the sea, but which have become very common, unfortunately for us.

Although Medusas, intended as Cnidaria, are rather nasty creatures; that is not the same for the mythological Medusa. She was not a monster, it was just bad press and propaganda that transformed her into a monster. It could happen in ancient times just as it happens today. And the fascinating thing about Cellini's representation of Medusa is that he understood exactly this: that she was not a monster and he refused to represent her as a monster.

About this paper, I must confess that I hated myself several times for having accepted to write it. With the zillion things I have to do, I couldn't figure out how I could find the time to write a complete academic paper on Cellini and his work, with references, figures, and all the rest; while at the same time maintaining some remnants of mental sanity. In the end, however, I made it and it is a remarkable satisfaction to see it "in press."



About the myth of Perseus and Medusa, I wrote some posts in this blog. Here is a list:

Cellini's Medusa (an early version of the paper I am describing here)

The head of Medusa (just a spectacular photo of the head of Cellini's Medusa)

David and Medusa (about a weird image of Medusa by Guy and Rodd)

The Art of Femicide (some reflections on the bad habit of beheading women that some males seemed to cultivate in ancient as well as in modern times)

And if you would like to have a preprint of the paper I am describing here, just drop me a note at ugo.bard(littlemedusa)unifi.it

The art of femicide

Benvenuto Cellini's "Perseus and Medusa", presently in Florence, Italy. Photo by the author

Celebrating the international women's day on March 8, may be a good occasion to remember how violent humans can be, not just against women but, at times, especially so. Look at the image above: it is Cellini's interpretation of the myth of Perseus and his victim, Medusa. As I described in an older post, a peculiar feature of this piece of statuary is how realistic it is in its depiction of the brutal murder of a young woman.

Within some limits, a true artist, such as Cellini was, can transcend the crude reality and we correctly admire this giant bronze as a masterpiece. However, it is also clear that Cellini was representing something he knew well: death and murder. He lived in an extremely violent time, and he tells us many details of his figthst in his "Life".

But Cellini's times are not really special in human history. The theme of "femicide" has been present in art for millennia and, recently, I discovered that the composition of Cellini's Medusa has been directly inspired by Roman art. Here is an example of how the Romans of Imperial times depicted the myth:

This is a fresco of the Roman Villa of Stabia (image courtesy of Bill Storage), an area that was buried during the eruption of the Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The composition, the posture of the body of Perseus, and many details are the same as Cellini's Perseus (except that the body of Medusa is missing, here). Cellini could not have seen this specific fresco, since it was discovered much later than the time when his Perseus was fused, but it is just one of a way of representing the myth of Medusa in Roman times: - there are many others, for instance this one:

This cameo goes back to, probably, 25 B.C. - A.D. 25, presently it is at the J. Paul Getty collection.

As you can see, the theme and the composition are the same. This way of depicting the beheading of a young woman must have been rather popular in Roman times and it didn't go out of fashion even in much later times, such as in the Renaissance, the time when Cellini fused his "Perseus".

And in our times? Well, things may not have changed so much as we like to think. Humans - and males in particular - remain extremely violent creatures. So, the theme of killing women didn't disappear; it is still with us. Some things never change.

David and Medusa

A very curious image, found by chance while navigating the web. It needs to be explained: it was clearly inspired by the "Piazza della Signoria" square in Florence, Italy, where you have two major pieces of statuary, Michelangelo's David and Cellini's "Perseus and Medusa" standing more or less in the position shown in the image.

Now, the authors of the image above must have been there and somehow, in a blast of creativity, they conceived the idea that the David was created not by laboriously extracting it out of a piece of marble, but directly out of a real person by Medusa who - as well known - had the capability of turning people into stone if they just looked at her. So they showed the moment of the creation with Michelangelo himself directing the operation. There is the small problem that the David of the Signoria square is three meters tall, but it is just a detail.

What I find absolutely fantastic about the image is the way Medusa is drawn. Wonderful: don't you agree? Compare the Medusa by Guy and Rodd with the head of Cellini's Medusa and you see that - maybe - the more modern one catches the spirit of the myth of Medusa just as well (and maybe even better!)



"Guy and Rodd" seem to be very creative fellows, indeed. Their site doesn't seem to be existing any more, but Google reports a book published by them in 2006.

You can also find in this blog a complete post about Cellini's Medusa.

 

The head of Cellini's Medusa

(original image by Ugo Bardi. Reproduce it as you like, if you cite the source, it is appreciated)

With his "Perseus and Medusa", Benvenuto Cellini created a true masterpiece; something that we can still admire today under the "Loggia de Lanzi" in Florence. Cellini went beyond the mere celebration of a murder, showing Medusa not as a monster, but as a creature of stunning, near supernatural beauty. In showing the head of Medusa held high by Perseus, Cellini may have intended to show the transcendence of a divine being: an ancient Moon Goddess transmogrified into a monster by bad press, returning to the realms where it came from.

For a more detailed examination of Cellini's "Perseus and Medusa", see this previous post.