Phineus and His Courtiers Turned into Stone

From the Getty Museum record

This dark, visceral drawing depicts an episode in the story of Perseus after the Greek mythological hero slays the Gorgon Medusa and wins the hand of Andromeda. It illustrates a moment when Phineus, an earlier suitor, tries to claim Andromeda and Perseus foils the attempt by using the head of Medusa to turn Phineus and his followers into stone. Drawn with dark contour lines and vigorously applied white heightening, the soldiers’ muscular bodies contort as they turn into stone. Their shields do nothing to protect them from Medusa’s petrifying power. The friezelike composition thrown into sharp relief reflects Burne-Jones’s study of classical art as well as Luca Signorelli’s frescoes in Orvieto. This drawing is prominent among many preparatory studies made for the grand, though unfinished, cycle known as the Perseus Series. Commissioned by the future British Conservative prime minister Arthur Balfour (1848–1930) for his London music room at 4 Carlton Gardens, Burne-Jones had free rein to develop the visual program. The commission may have come about through Balfour’s membership in a group called The Souls, an organization with which Burne-Jones was associated. The artist worked on the design of this intricate series over the course of twenty years, imagining a mixed-media presentation which would have included painted gesso relief panels in addition to oil paintings.