Artistic analysis essay
Created in 1597, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s Medusa is one of the most famous images depicting part of my section of the Metamorphoses, the story of Perseus and Medusa. Caravaggio is considered by many to be the founder of the Baroque era of art in Italy, which followed the Renaissance. The Baroque era was marked by dark, rich color pallets, and a heavy use of religious imagery. Caravaggio tends to paint with close attention to detail, and regularly includes odd specifics like dirty feet or dirty fingernails in an otherwise luxurious painting; additionally, Caravaggio uses facial expression to show meaning in his paintings. In Medusa, Caravaggio incorporates all of these elements. You can see his attention to detail in the snakes’ lifelike appearance and scaly texture. As far as jarring details, Medusa’s face, on the one hand, has a beautiful creamy complexion; on the other hand, she has a gaping hole with rotting teeth for a mouth, and gory blood shooting out of her neck. The gushing blood shows that Caravaggio intentionally painted Medusa at the moment of decapitation. Her expression demonstrates that she is still conscious in this moment. In fact, many critics believe that this painting captures Medusa just when she realizes that her head is no longer connected to her body. Unlike Ovid, Caravaggio chooses to show Medusa’s humanity -- she was the only mortal of the three Gorgon sisters, who was changed from a beautiful woman into her monstrous state by Athena. It is a noteable difference between Caravaggio and Ovid that Caravaggio chooses not only to include only Perseus, but also not to include Medusa’s body, the Pegasus, or his brother. This difference perhaps reflects that Caravaggio was commissioned to paint this work by the de’ Medici family, who were major art patrons at that time in Italy, and who often used Medusa’s head as a symbol of strength and power. Furthermore, this painting of Medusa was itself attached to a shield, which is most likely an allusion to Athena, who according to the myth, eventually puts Medusa’s head on her own shield. While Ovid’s narrative centers on the story of the hero, Caravaggio’s painting is focused on the antagonist. This difference may point to the de’ Medici commission, or it might be an indication that Caravaggio was interested in exploring the complexities of villains.