Medusa (Rubens)
Peter Paul Rubens · 1618
The story
Medusa is a c.1618 painting by the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, showing the severed head of Medusa. The snakes in the painting have been attributed to Frans Snyders. Frans Snyders also helped Peter Paul Rubens with his work Prometheus Bound, where he painted the eagle portrayed in it. It is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Another version is held in Moravian Gallery in Brno. Rubens was not originally attributed to the painting. Medusa was a popular iconographic symbol at the time due to the interest in Greek mythology by numerous Baroque artists such as Rubens and Caravaggio. The use of Medusa as a symbol has evolved over the course of centuries and has various interpretations of the iconographic meaning, with Rubens' painting based on an interpretation of the Greek mythological story of Medusa.
- Artist
- Peter Paul Rubens
- Date
- 1618
- Collection
- Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria
- Movement
- Flemish Baroque painting
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas, panel
- Size
- 68.5 × 118 cm
Story adapted from the Wikipedia article and its contributors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Facts from Wikidata (CC0). Image: Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
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