Medusa

Medusa

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, c.1592

Mask of Medusa

Adolfo Wildt

Tormented Head

Franz Von Stuck

1863-1928

Tête de Méduse, by Peter Paul Rubens (1618)

In Greek mythology Medusa was a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as having the face of a hideous human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Gazing directly upon her would turn onlookers to stone. Most sources describe her as the daughter of Phorcys and Ceto though the author Hyginus interposes a generation and gives Medusa another chthonic pair as parents.

Medusa was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head as a weapon until he gave it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In classical antiquity the image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the Gorgoneion.