Getty Museum
Medusa
Creator
Vincenzo GemitoItalian Artist · 1852–1929
All works by this person →Vincenzo Gemito was essentially self-taught. Discovered on the foundling hospital's doorstep and adopted by a poor artisan, Gemito got work in a sculptor's studio when he was nine years old. He ultimately worked for two local artists, but neither seems to have had much stylistic influence on him. By age sixteen, Gemito had sold a statue to the city of Naples. His realistic representations of Neapo
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1911
- Medium
- Partially gilt silver
- Culture
- Italian
- Department
- Sculpture
- Institution
- Getty Museum
The severed head of Medusa stares out from the convex face of a two-sided relief. Its psychological realism reveals the conflicting yet symbiotic emotions of attraction and repulsion. The gaze of Medusa--transformed by the goddess Athena into a creature with snakes for hair--turned anyone who would look at her into stone. The sculptor Vincenzo Gemito derived his composition from the famous antique cameo, the *Tazza Farnese,* but transformed it into an entirely new kind of sculptural object. He revived Renaissance techniques of lost-wax casting to make the relief. Although he concentrated on the face of the two-sided, glistening metallic relief, he textured the back with snakeskin.
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