Relief Pithos with Perseus and the Gorgon
Unknown (Cyclades) · c. 670 BC
A storage jar as tall as a person, one metre thirty high, is covered with figures in relief instead of paint. On the neck Perseus, in a broad hat, a short tunic and winged sandals, with a bag at his side, turns his head away as he plunges his sword into the neck of the Gorgon. Medusa here is not the snake-haired monster of later art but a hybrid: a woman from the waist up, facing you, and a horse from the waist down. Flowers on long stems and a lizard fill the background. On the belly rows of deer and grazing stags file past between bands of pattern.
The jar was made in the Cyclades in the early seventh century BC, in the Orientalising period when Greek craftsmen were borrowing monsters and floral motifs from the East, and it was found at Thebes on the mainland. Relief pithoi were made by pressing stamps and moulds into the wet clay, and this is one of the earliest surviving Greek images of the beheading of Medusa. The horse-bodied Gorgon may allude to her offspring, the winged horse Pegasus, who sprang from her neck. The Louvre bought the vase in 1897.
Did You Know? On this jar Medusa has the body of a horse, one of the earliest and strangest images of the Gorgon in Greek art.
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