Basin with the Head of Medusa
Unknown · Second century AD
A shallow round basin almost two metres across has been hollowed from honey-coloured alabaster, a translucent stone whose veins glow when the light catches them. Lean over the rim: in the centre of the bowl a medallion carved in low relief shows the head of Medusa, the gorgon whose face turned onlookers to stone and which the Romans used as a charm against evil. Placed at the bottom of a fountain basin, she would have stared up through moving water. The bowl was broken into several pieces and rejoined, and the foot it stands on is a modern replacement in grey granite.
The basin was found in Rome in 1720 at the foot of the Aventine hill near the Tiber, together with a companion bowl decorated with a river god that is also displayed in this hall. Both are Roman work of the second century, from a villa or public bath. They came to Paris in 1803 in the Napoleonic transfers of antiquities from Rome and remained at the Louvre after 1815.
Did You Know? The gorgon's face lies at the bottom of the bowl, so she once glared up at visitors through a sheet of water.
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