Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Bust of Medusa, marble, c. 1644-48 (Capitoline Museum)
Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:
[flickr_tags user_id=”82032880@N00″ tags=”bust of medusa,”]
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:04] We’re in the Capitoline Museums in Rome, and we’re looking at this gorgeous little sculpture, this bust, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:12] It’s not really little. Her head looks life-size, or maybe even slightly larger, no?
Dr. Zucker: [0:17] Yeah, no, it is, you’re right, it’s bigger than life, but I guess after looking at the massive Marcus Aurelius, it seems small to me.
Dr. Harris: [0:00] That’s true. It’s a bust.
Dr. Zucker: [0:28] You’re right, it’s larger than life, and it’s of Medusa. This is a Greek myth. She was one of the three Gorgon sisters, as portrayed by the Greeks as a monster who had hair replaced by snakes.
Dr. Harris: [0:00] Made out of snakes.
Dr. Zucker: [0:38] Yeah, and here they’re writhing.
Dr. Harris: [0:00] And whose gaze turned men to stone, is that right?
Dr. Zucker: [0:41] That’s right, yes. In fact, when Perseus beheads her, he uses the reflection in his shield so that he can attack her without having to look.
Dr. Harris: [0:50] Without looking at her. She, in the 19th century, comes to represent a kind of femme fatale, dangerous woman.
Dr. Zucker: [0:56] That’s right.
Dr. Harris: [0:00] But here, she’s depicted so sympathetically.
Dr. Zucker: [1:01] It may be the only time I’ve seen her less as a threat and more as almost a kind of victim.
Dr. Harris: [1:06] She’s so Baroque in that she’s making this expression that looks very momentary. We’ve caught her making this expression on her face, and this captured sense of time.
[1:19] Because of the realism of the face and this expression, it makes you, like, I want to make the expression on her face, of opening my mouth and pushing my brows together and up. As soon as I do that, you get this feeling of being very vulnerable and frightened almost.
Dr. Zucker: [1:37] She’s terrified of herself here.
Dr. Harris: [0:00] Right, yeah.
Dr. Zucker: [1:42] Imagine what it must feel like to have those snakes writhing around your head always.
Dr. Harris: [0:00] And have anyone who looks at you turned to stone.
Dr. Zucker: [0:00] Turned to stone.
Dr. Harris: [1:47] What a kind of lonely and terrible existence. These writhing snakes that Bernini has left rather raw compared with the polish that he’s depicted her face with.
Dr. Zucker: [1:59] It’s true, he’s really smoothed the face. It’s got this brilliant sheen, especially those lips, which almost look wet, so this tension between the monster that she is and in a sense the humanity that suffers from that.
Dr. Harris: [2:17] The light and the shadow because of the drilling and the depth of the carving of the snakes around her face is also very beautiful.
Dr. Zucker: [2:22] That’s right. Like Michelangelo, carving so deeply into the mouth even. There’s no need to carve that deeply, except to create those shadows. And this contrast between light and dark. Look at the depth of those brows, the exaggeration of the nose and the lips and the chin.
Dr. Harris: [0:00] It’s a kind of exaggeration in her expression.
Dr. Zucker: [2:39] There is, which makes it all the more powerful, all the more theatrical, all the more Baroque.
Dr. Harris: [2:43] The more poignant.
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