Medusa by Bernini in the Capitoline Museum, 1995

Bust of Medusa - Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples 1598-Rome 1680)
5th decade of the 17th century
White marble: 50 x 41 x 38 centimetres

Small spool-shaped pedestal in portoro marble: height 18 cm, diameter 20 cm
18th century base in coloured marble veneer; from the bottom upwards antique grey, African marble, proconnesus, antique yellow, antique green, Caria red, alpine green; inscribed on the marble on the left side: the coat-of-arms of the Senate and Roman People; on the right side: the Bichi coat-of-arms; inscribed in capital letters on the front side: “MEDUSAE IMAGO IN CLYPEIS / ROMANORUM AD HOSTIUM / TERROREM OLIM INCISA / NUNC CELEBERRIMI / STATUARIJ GLORIA SPLENDET / IN CAPITOLIO / MUNUS MARCH: / FRANCISCI BICHI CONS: / MENSE MARTIJ / ANNO D / MDCCXXXI.” “The head of Medusa, in ancient times used as ornamentation on the shields of the Romans to terrorize their enemies, today shines brightly in the Capitol in glory of the renowned sculptor, donated by Marquis Francesco Bichi, Conservator in the month of March in the year of the Lord 1731.”

Provenance: gift of the Marquis Francesco Bichi, Conservator of the first trimester of the year1731; The Bust of Medusa and the base are documented in the Sala delle Oche since 1734, inventory S/1166.

Medusa and Bernini

In the Metamorphoses, Ovid narrates that Medusa, the most beautiful and deadly of the Gorgons, had the power to turn to stone anyone who dared gaze into her eyes.
By surprising her in her sleep, Perseus was able to cut off her head while looking at her reflection in the bronze shield given to him by Minerva.
The hero, after having freed Andromeda and defeated Phineus thanks to the still intact petrifying power of Medusa, he gave the head to Minerva who used it to adorn her aegis, and then her shield, as a terrifying weapon to defeat the enemies of reason and knowledge, virtues that she embodied. This very ancient use led to the custom, started in the Renaissance, of decorating battle and parade shields with the Head of Medusa as a weapon to terrorise enemies, but also as a symbol of the virtue and wisdom of whoever held the shield.
Disregarding the depiction of the head of the Medusa proposed by classical sculpture, Renaissance and Mannerism, so skilfully revived in the last decade of the 16th century in Rome by Caravaggio, in the parade shield painted for cardinal Del Monte, later donated to the Grand Duke Fernando de’Medici and by Annibale Carracci in the frescoes painted between 1598 and 1601 in the Galleria of Palazzo Farnese, Bernini sculpted a true bust - portrait of Medusa, alive, caught in a transitory moment of unique “metamorphosis”.
The myth narrated by Ovid, wherein the beautiful blonde hair of Medusa is transformed into horrible serpents by Minerva as a punishment for having had an intercourse with Neptune in the Temple of the female divinities of Faith and Truth, is revisited in a completely original manner in the eyes of the poet Giovan Battista Marino.
In a well-known madrigal taken from La Galeria (1620, I, 272), the poet pretends that it is a wonderful statue of Medusa that is speaking:"(…) Non so se mi scolpì scarpel mortale, / o specchiando me stessa in chiaro vetro / la propria vista mia mi fece tale".
(“I don’t know if a mortal chisel sculpted me /or whether by looking at myself in clear glass/ the very sight of myself made me this way.”)
The classical myth is overturned to exalt the virtue of the unknown sculptor: it isn't the Gorgon who petrifies her enemies with her gaze, but it is Medusa herself, by making the fatal error of looking at her image in a mirror, who seems to have transformed herself into marble.

Considered by the critics as one of the most problematic works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, it was probably created in the first years of the papacy of Innocent X Pamphilj, between 1644 and 1648, when the artist was sent away from the papal court because he was a favourite of the Barberini and at a time when his fame had been temporarily diminished on account of the professional humiliation caused by the demolition of the