RON HENGGELER

San Francisco City Hall flood-fit green and red for the Christmas Season

December dawn in San Francisco seen from my window

The towers of the Golden Gate Bridge from Fulton Street at 18th Avenue

Medusa is a marble sculpture of the eponymous character from the classical myth. It was executed by the Italian sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini. Its precise date of creation is unknown, but it is likely to have been executed in the 1630s. It was first documented in 1731 when presented to the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome, and is now part of the collections of the Capitoline Museums.

The portrait draws on the myth of Medusa, the snake haired woman whose gaze could turn onlookers to stone. Unlike other depictions of the Medusa, such as Benevenuto Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa, the Medusa is not portrayed as a vanquished figure, her head severed from her body but as a living monster. Bernini’s decision to create a marble sculpture may be some kind of visual pun on the myth - creating a stone version of a living creature that could turn men to stone.

Nothing is known about its creation, and parts of the sculpture’s execution undermine Bernini’s authorship of the sculpture, most notable the heavy, exaggerated eyebrows and the rough treatment of the snakes. Yet the sensual fleshy quality of the cheeks and lip, the polished precision of the face, the tormented face of the Medusa and lively intelligence behind the literary concept and its unusual treatment point to the work of Bernini.

The fingers of a museum-goer that mimic the tresses of Medusa

Bernini's Medusa
November 17, 2011 – March 4, 2012
Musei Capitolini in Rome are lending San Francisco one of their greatest treasures, the remarkable Baroque masterpiece The Medusa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), one of art history’s finest sculptors and a leading figure in Italian Baroque art and architecture. Recent conservation efforts have restored this sculptural triumph to its full glory and revealed previously hidden artistic techniques.

Believed to date from around 1638 to 1648, this extraordinary work takes its subject from classical mythology, as cited in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It shows the beautiful Medusa, one of the Gorgon sisters, caught in the terrible process of transformation into a monster. The Medusa will be displayed exclusively in the U.S. at the Legion of Honor in the museum’s Baroque gallery 6, where it can be seen in context with the Museums’ great collections of paintings and sculpture from the era of Bernini.

A Baroque masterpiece, the Medusa (c. 1638-1648) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini is situated against a wall in the Sala delle Oche (Hall of the Geese, from the two bronze ducks that reside there. It is a placement that does not allow many other perspectives. The pictures below were taken when the Medusa was on exclusive loan to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

The bust of Medusa is by Gian Lorenzo Bernini probably was sculpted in the period 1638-1648 and is in the Palazzo dei Conservatori (Rome), where it has been displayed in the Hall of the Geese (so-named from the two bronze ducks that reside there) since 1734.

Unlike most depictions of the Gorgon, Bernini presents Medusa at the moment she perceives herself in an imaginary mirror and realizes that she is being transformed. Her anguish at the metamorphosis is obvious as the tresses of her beautiful hair turn to writhing serpents.