Gorgon Fun

In an essay from 1999 entitled "Cellini's Blood," art historian Michael Cole offers a fascinating reading Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus and Medusa (c 1550, Florence). Among the numerous interesting observations made in this award-winning article, Cole notes how the bronze blood streaming from Medusa's severed head and neck seem to have been referred to in period inventories as "gorgoni." And while seemingly related to the Greek word Gorgon that often designates Medusa herself, Cole argues that in the sixteenth century, gorgoni meant coral. Therefore, by understanding why these spurts of bronze blood would be likened to coral helps us to apprehend what period viewers thought of Cellini's sculpture and the narrative it represents. Cole then goes on to relate how, in period Italian translations of Ovid's "Metamorphoses", a mythical origin story of coral is told by the dripping of blood out of the head of Medusa as Perseus frees Andromeda.

Now, setting aside the various difficulties that may apply to Cole's reading of Cellini's bloods as corals, Old Ken was fascinated to see this 1679 depiction of the Perseus and Andromeda story in the Louvre. As Andromeda is being unchained by a cherub at right, Perseus strikes a pose at the center of Pierre Mignard's massive canvas, bloody sword by his side.

Here is the relevant story from Ovid as Cole gives it:

"Having killed the dragon, Perseus came down from the rock and sat on the bank of the sea to wash himself, for he was soaked with the dragon's blood. As he did this, the head of the Medusa got in his way, so he set it on the ground. So that the head did not crack, Perseus gathered some seaborne sticks of wood to set it on, and put them on the ground. Immediately those sticks hardened as stone does, and from the blood of the head they became vermillion. It is thus that coral is made, and this was the first coral."

Now, at Perseus' left foot in Mignard's painting is the severed head of Medusa, which still seems to wriggle with serpentine life. Moreover, as can be perceived even in this lousy detail, red sprigs of coral are clearly emerging from beneath the head, presumably from contact with the leaking blood (or perhaps just from contact with the head itself, depending on your version of Ovid).




In any case, what's interesting about Mignard's clear knowledge of this root-of-coral-from-the-severed-Medusa-head story is the light it sheds on a very disturbing painting now in the National Gallery in London. Known as "The Marquise de Seignelay and Two of her Sons" (1691), this painting shows (so we are told) the seated marquise "as the marine deity Thetis, and the elder child as Achilles, the son of Thetis." Fair enough - - and we could probably go through the iconography of Thetis and find the place of coral in it.





So, what I like about the connection with the Louvre painting is that it allows us to read this London portrait in another way. That is, perhaps we are to see the marquise as a kind of Medusa figure who is turning the green leaves in her hair into corals, gorgoni, right before our eyes. Implicitly, she would be having a similarly stiffening effect upon us ... but that's a story for another day.