I was alone with my thoughts and hurting body in an empty, Italian apartment when anxiety, having entered the apartment with me, attacked from all sides. My immune system was fighting the last effects of COVID-19, leaving me sore and achy. I slept a lot, and when I wasn’t sleeping, I was fighting that anxiety, which spoke with a voice that was far too loud and easy to listen to in my required seclusion.
When I was still able to do so, I walked to the site of a statue called Perseus with the Head of Medusa in the Piazza della Signoria. It was the day my plane landed in Florence. I dared to look at Medusa’s face. I remained my fleshed out self. I walked away. I learned months later that the statue is usually referred to in a shortened manner: Perseus. Just Perseus.
There stands a public garden of marble, stone, and bronze. Its elemental plants do not grow taller or wither. They simply stand, on display for the locals and tourists of Florence, Italy, to tell the stories of Greek heroes and tragedies without uttering a word.
These plants – these statues – are the Sabine women trying to claw free from the clutches of their kidnappers. They are gaping lions resting on pillars of stone, remnants of the once ubiquitous Medici family. They are pieces of art birthed from the dream that was the Renaissance.
Perseus stands out from the other plants in this garden. It’s lifted up on a pedestal, situated near the front of its platformed area near the Uffizi Gallery. The statue depicts two classic Greek figures: hero Perseus and monster Medusa. They aren’t standing next to one another, locked in intimate battle. No. Perseus has shorn Medusa’s head clean off. He stands on her broken body as he grasps her head full of snakes in his left hand. The sword responsible for ending Medusa’s life is still clutched in his right hand. His dark face reveals no decipherable emotion.
Medusa’s eyes are closed, her lips slightly parted, the excess blood and gore of her throat hanging down like a clump of tangled seaweed. One is triumphant. The other is brutally mutilated. Both have been on display since 1545 for millions of people to stare up at in awe and disgust.
Benvenuto Cellini was born in 1500, repeatedly litigated for theft, sodomy, and murder, and was one of the Renaissance’s finest artists. News of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s commissioning Cellini to create Perseus with the Head of Medusa surely came as no surprise, especially considering the widespread knowledge of Cellini’s mastery in goldsmithing and bronze work. Cellini would eventually turn his critical artistic focuses to writing, producing hundreds of sonnets and an autobiography that took close to a decade to complete – the same amount of time it took him to complete Perseus with the Head of Medusa.
Cellini’s statue was not the first plant in this Florentine garden. He was, as one could put it, rather late to the game. Michelangelo’s David (which has since been replaced with a copy), Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus, and Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes had already been created and placed in the piazza.
Perhaps Cellini’s decision to place a subtle self-portrait on the back of Perseus’ molded head, out of sight from onlookers peering at the statue’s front, was only a small part of his attempt to stand out amongst other notable artists. Making his statue out of bronze rather than marble or another type of common element was a physical risk as well as an attempt to catch viewers’ eyes; the process of melting and molding bronze was and still is a tricky one. Perseus is the steadfast hero, the political symbol of the Duke’s “decapitation” of the Republic from the destructive snakes working against democracy. And Perseus’ prize, this cursed woman’s head, was modeled after Cellini’s lover. She was tricked into posing for his project, subjected to sharing her likeness with one of history’s most sexualized and feared figures. I wonder what he told her she was posing for.
I imagine them sitting in a studio lined with windows. The curtains have been pushed back to let in natural light. This lover – this woman – sits on a stool in front of Cellini for him to best capture her essence, to study the tilt of her chin and the angles of her face. I like to think she trashed that studio after Cellini’s finished product was erected in Florence’s busiest piazza. I hope she at least left her mark in some way before leaving his deceitful ass behind her, reducing him to nothing more than the guy who took his art “a bit too seriously.”
That lover’s face remains the image of a weaponized woman. The idea of others gazing up at a bronze version of the face I see in the mirror is yet another thing I can only imagine. I only wonder if another lover of Cellini’s, a servant he married in 1562 and had five children with, ever acted as his muse as well.
Whenever I tore myself away from the comfort of my bed to eat some food, write at my small desk, or enjoy some sun on a small balcony adjoining my apartment, I found it was easier to tune out my anxiety’s voice. Usually my anxiety whispers, and it’s easier to drown it out with the voices of real people. But quarantine didn’t afford me that luxury. So it abandoned its whispering and talked a lot during this time, thinking I would welcome its company. It chattered on about how there were too many hours in the day for me to possibly fill without going crazy. There were too many days left to fill the void that was this isolating illness. The voice grew fainter when I sat at that desk and wrapped myself with words, was quieter when I stepped onto that balcony and looked at the bright yellow walls of the buildings facing my little corner of Florence. But it was still there, resting the tone of its voice on my back, asserting its dominance while I was weak.
The original Greek myth Cellini referenced in his bronze sculpture starts with an impossible task and ends with unexpected love. This love story is depicted on the relief panels (or base) of Cellini’s statue. Perseus, a young mortal hero favored by the gods, was sent to slay the Gorgon Medusa. The selfish king who sent him didn’t expect Perseus to return. Perseus’ heavenly favor, however, ensured his survival. Armed with winged-sandals from the messenger god Hermes and a polished mirror from goddess Athena with which to avoid direct eye contact with the slumbering Medusa, Perseus slew her in her sleep. As simple as that. It was on Perseus’ way home that he laid eyes on a damsel in distress, Andromeda. She was in desperate need of saving from a sea monster, Cetus. So Perseus rescued her from what would have been a terrible fate.
Perseus, survivor of the dreaded Medusa, savior of the lovely Andromeda, returns the latter to her father and receives lavished praise, right? Wrong.
Andromeda’s uncle, Phineus, whom Andromeda was already supposed to marry, found the news of Perseus the Bride Stealer a bit upsetting. To avoid civil confrontation, Perseus angled Medusa’s head (which he was still evidently holding) toward Phineus to turn him to stone, thus eliminating the obstacle. Perseus also used this method on the sea monster Cetus to save his bride-to-be. Perseus, so affected with love, was quick to thrust Medusa’s head forward, to see her scalp strain against gravity, to see two beings enter eternities of stone and silence.
Cellini’s bronze statue strains against the gravity of time. It groans under the irony of Athena’s role in the story: the exacter of Medusa’s curse as well as the giver of Perseus’ mirror. On top of all this, Perseus and Andromeda’s story is depicted on the pedestal Medusa’s slain body rests on.
Medusa was alone with her thoughts and writhing, hissing head of hair when Perseus arrived in his fancy flying footwear to end her life. She was used as Perseus’ weapon to bring down a terrible creature of the sea and an unsavory uncle. Her molded bronze head was shaped by Cellini’s hands to hang as that weapon for as long as the statue remains standing. The original has yet to be replaced with a copy.
Spatially, this particular statue stands among preexisting depictions of various men. The faces of these sculptures carved from white marble are all turned away. They dare not gaze upon the face of unyielding death. But Michelangelo’s original David and its copy standing proudly outside of the Medici family’s first palace are subjected to Cellini’s Gorgon. The statues face one another, and the ever-defensive Perseus ensures that David and Medusa’s staring contest never sees an end. A silent, undercover war of artistic dominance has been waged in a corner of the birthplace of the Renaissance.
How many times will Medusa’s image and reputation be used for the purposes of others?
How many will remember her as the woman who was cursed instead of the monster unable to withstand the obstacles set before her?
She cannot return home, cannot screw her head back on, cannot remove Perseus’ feet from her back. How many locals and tourists have matched her cursed stare? And how many have realized, as they walk Medieval cobblestone streets bustling with people from every corner of the globe, that a story of stone, death, and irony is staring at them, silently screaming for their attention in an immovable bronze package?
When Medusa managed to tear herself away from thoughts fixated on the life she led before she was cursed, I like to think the company she kept helped make it easier for her to forget the reality of what she had become. The word “cursed” could’ve bounced around her head quite often. Mirrors were shattered and removed from her dwelling place: the island of Sarpedon. Medusa had the luxury of company in her little corner of the Mediterranean: her sisters who joined her in banishment. To suffer unfathomable grief and rage with the presence and empathy of others, to have other tangible voices speak and drown out the volume of destructive thoughts – these may have been what saved her from total madness.
A weaponized female is still a woman, and the face of villainy was still an individual subjected to forces beyond her control.
Resolving to move forward with a powerful curse to face the void of too many hours and an existence spanning countless days was all Medusa had before her death. Before she rested her head in peace to never wake up.
The voice inside her head who’s favorite word was “cursed” had taken on a body, intruded into her cave, and sliced her head clean off.
This is mine now, the body said. And that body left, returning home.
Medusa’s melded body lies atop another story, her bleeding form a sacrifice that sees the hero of that story reach his happy ending. Her statue’s relief panels are dedicated to two lovers who went on to have seven sons together. Her statue’s main focus is the man who stands atop her, clothed in nothing but a sash and ceremonial headpiece, yet clearly muscled, strong, and triumphant. Her statue is hers only in the sense of her body being its base and her head being its shock factor. Her statue is an artistic statement made by a 14th century man aiming to prove himself talented in a whole mass of similar-minded fellows all trying to create art that meant something. Her body and her face meant something to him, at least enough to be used in furthering an agenda that saw Perseus still standing, and Cellini along with him, immortalized in dark bronze.
That week I spent by myself, battling every minute against a voice who’s favorite phrase was, “your mental health won’t survive this,” was longer than I thought I could bear at times. I read the books I’d packed in my suitcase. I watched feel-good movies on Disney +. I worked on my novel. I ventured outside for food and fresh air, mask in tow. And I went through my camera roll, looking at the pictures I’d taken of everything I’d seen in Florence’s streets and art galleries. The irony hurt, but I looked anyway. I had no sisters, no company, just a disembodied voice threatening to jump on me as I slept to separate my head from my shoulders. To ask me to pose for a project and remain subjected to what I can now detect were lies. To construct a statue where my body and worry-filled head could be held by that voice that has taken on a body. The title could be something along the lines of My Curse.
But I woke up on my second to last morning in Florence, took a rapid COVID test, and looked at its negative result. There was no violence in that apartment as I made my bed, put on some real clothes, and looked at my face in the mirror, silencing my anxiety’s voice with a stony gaze.
The end of my solitude was in sight. I would be boarding a plane back to California the next morning.
I spent that first day of freedom completing my Italian cultural class final exam, reuniting with my roommates to share one last meal, and sitting in one of the squares near my apartment to avoid the reality of my inevitable departure from a city I didn’t want to leave.
I rose at 3:00am in that empty apartment. It had been a short, dreamless sleep. My body and head had ceased their aching, reminding me that I still had a head on my shoulders.
I caught a taxi to the airport. All the tourists and locals were asleep. The frosted streetlights shone through the humid mid-summer air. I looked through the car window as we passed Perseus and Medusa. I wondered at the statue’s appeal and why my eyes wandered to Perseus once the sight of Medusa’s lifeless form became too gruesome. Knowing the statue would still be standing there even after I boarded my plane was comforting. Knowing Perseus’ feet would still be resting irremovably on Medusa’s back reminded me that anxiety comes in many forms. It is capable of grasping a head of hair with a vicelike grip. But it is also capable of being silenced.
I gazed up at the unlikely pair. At the head. At the garden of statues turned away from them. And I returned home.
Works Referenced
+Greekacom. “Myth of Perseus and Andromeda - Greek Myths: Greeka.” Greekacom, +Greekacom, https://www.greeka.com/greece-myths/perseus-andromeda/.
Livingston, Leslie. “Florence's Outdoor Art: Guide To the Statues of the Piazza Della Signoria.” The Geographical Cure, 9 Nov. 2021, https://www.thegeographicalcure.com/post/statues-of-the-piazza-della-signoria.
Tognozzi, Elissa. “My Life by Benvenuto Cellini, The Literary Work.” Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/my-life-0#:~:text=Cellini%20recounts%20his%20adventures%20and,justify%20his%20character%20and%20behaviors.
Wikipedia. “Perseus with the Head of Medusa.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Aug. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseus_with_the_Head_of_Medusa.
Wray, James. “Perseus and the Head of Medusa - A Very Florentine Story.” DailyArt Magazine, 22 May 2019, https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/perseus-and-the-head-of-medusa/.
When I was still able to do so, I walked to the site of a statue called Perseus with the Head of Medusa in the Piazza della Signoria. It was the day my plane landed in Florence. I dared to look at Medusa’s face. I remained my fleshed out self. I walked away. I learned months later that the statue is usually referred to in a shortened manner: Perseus. Just Perseus.
There stands a public garden of marble, stone, and bronze. Its elemental plants do not grow taller or wither. They simply stand, on display for the locals and tourists of Florence, Italy, to tell the stories of Greek heroes and tragedies without uttering a word.
These plants – these statues – are the Sabine women trying to claw free from the clutches of their kidnappers. They are gaping lions resting on pillars of stone, remnants of the once ubiquitous Medici family. They are pieces of art birthed from the dream that was the Renaissance.
Perseus stands out from the other plants in this garden. It’s lifted up on a pedestal, situated near the front of its platformed area near the Uffizi Gallery. The statue depicts two classic Greek figures: hero Perseus and monster Medusa. They aren’t standing next to one another, locked in intimate battle. No. Perseus has shorn Medusa’s head clean off. He stands on her broken body as he grasps her head full of snakes in his left hand. The sword responsible for ending Medusa’s life is still clutched in his right hand. His dark face reveals no decipherable emotion.
Medusa’s eyes are closed, her lips slightly parted, the excess blood and gore of her throat hanging down like a clump of tangled seaweed. One is triumphant. The other is brutally mutilated. Both have been on display since 1545 for millions of people to stare up at in awe and disgust.
Benvenuto Cellini was born in 1500, repeatedly litigated for theft, sodomy, and murder, and was one of the Renaissance’s finest artists. News of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s commissioning Cellini to create Perseus with the Head of Medusa surely came as no surprise, especially considering the widespread knowledge of Cellini’s mastery in goldsmithing and bronze work. Cellini would eventually turn his critical artistic focuses to writing, producing hundreds of sonnets and an autobiography that took close to a decade to complete – the same amount of time it took him to complete Perseus with the Head of Medusa.
Cellini’s statue was not the first plant in this Florentine garden. He was, as one could put it, rather late to the game. Michelangelo’s David (which has since been replaced with a copy), Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus, and Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes had already been created and placed in the piazza.
Perhaps Cellini’s decision to place a subtle self-portrait on the back of Perseus’ molded head, out of sight from onlookers peering at the statue’s front, was only a small part of his attempt to stand out amongst other notable artists. Making his statue out of bronze rather than marble or another type of common element was a physical risk as well as an attempt to catch viewers’ eyes; the process of melting and molding bronze was and still is a tricky one. Perseus is the steadfast hero, the political symbol of the Duke’s “decapitation” of the Republic from the destructive snakes working against democracy. And Perseus’ prize, this cursed woman’s head, was modeled after Cellini’s lover. She was tricked into posing for his project, subjected to sharing her likeness with one of history’s most sexualized and feared figures. I wonder what he told her she was posing for.
I imagine them sitting in a studio lined with windows. The curtains have been pushed back to let in natural light. This lover – this woman – sits on a stool in front of Cellini for him to best capture her essence, to study the tilt of her chin and the angles of her face. I like to think she trashed that studio after Cellini’s finished product was erected in Florence’s busiest piazza. I hope she at least left her mark in some way before leaving his deceitful ass behind her, reducing him to nothing more than the guy who took his art “a bit too seriously.”
That lover’s face remains the image of a weaponized woman. The idea of others gazing up at a bronze version of the face I see in the mirror is yet another thing I can only imagine. I only wonder if another lover of Cellini’s, a servant he married in 1562 and had five children with, ever acted as his muse as well.
Whenever I tore myself away from the comfort of my bed to eat some food, write at my small desk, or enjoy some sun on a small balcony adjoining my apartment, I found it was easier to tune out my anxiety’s voice. Usually my anxiety whispers, and it’s easier to drown it out with the voices of real people. But quarantine didn’t afford me that luxury. So it abandoned its whispering and talked a lot during this time, thinking I would welcome its company. It chattered on about how there were too many hours in the day for me to possibly fill without going crazy. There were too many days left to fill the void that was this isolating illness. The voice grew fainter when I sat at that desk and wrapped myself with words, was quieter when I stepped onto that balcony and looked at the bright yellow walls of the buildings facing my little corner of Florence. But it was still there, resting the tone of its voice on my back, asserting its dominance while I was weak.
The original Greek myth Cellini referenced in his bronze sculpture starts with an impossible task and ends with unexpected love. This love story is depicted on the relief panels (or base) of Cellini’s statue. Perseus, a young mortal hero favored by the gods, was sent to slay the Gorgon Medusa. The selfish king who sent him didn’t expect Perseus to return. Perseus’ heavenly favor, however, ensured his survival. Armed with winged-sandals from the messenger god Hermes and a polished mirror from goddess Athena with which to avoid direct eye contact with the slumbering Medusa, Perseus slew her in her sleep. As simple as that. It was on Perseus’ way home that he laid eyes on a damsel in distress, Andromeda. She was in desperate need of saving from a sea monster, Cetus. So Perseus rescued her from what would have been a terrible fate.
Perseus, survivor of the dreaded Medusa, savior of the lovely Andromeda, returns the latter to her father and receives lavished praise, right? Wrong.
Andromeda’s uncle, Phineus, whom Andromeda was already supposed to marry, found the news of Perseus the Bride Stealer a bit upsetting. To avoid civil confrontation, Perseus angled Medusa’s head (which he was still evidently holding) toward Phineus to turn him to stone, thus eliminating the obstacle. Perseus also used this method on the sea monster Cetus to save his bride-to-be. Perseus, so affected with love, was quick to thrust Medusa’s head forward, to see her scalp strain against gravity, to see two beings enter eternities of stone and silence.
Cellini’s bronze statue strains against the gravity of time. It groans under the irony of Athena’s role in the story: the exacter of Medusa’s curse as well as the giver of Perseus’ mirror. On top of all this, Perseus and Andromeda’s story is depicted on the pedestal Medusa’s slain body rests on.
Medusa was alone with her thoughts and writhing, hissing head of hair when Perseus arrived in his fancy flying footwear to end her life. She was used as Perseus’ weapon to bring down a terrible creature of the sea and an unsavory uncle. Her molded bronze head was shaped by Cellini’s hands to hang as that weapon for as long as the statue remains standing. The original has yet to be replaced with a copy.
Spatially, this particular statue stands among preexisting depictions of various men. The faces of these sculptures carved from white marble are all turned away. They dare not gaze upon the face of unyielding death. But Michelangelo’s original David and its copy standing proudly outside of the Medici family’s first palace are subjected to Cellini’s Gorgon. The statues face one another, and the ever-defensive Perseus ensures that David and Medusa’s staring contest never sees an end. A silent, undercover war of artistic dominance has been waged in a corner of the birthplace of the Renaissance.
How many times will Medusa’s image and reputation be used for the purposes of others?
How many will remember her as the woman who was cursed instead of the monster unable to withstand the obstacles set before her?
She cannot return home, cannot screw her head back on, cannot remove Perseus’ feet from her back. How many locals and tourists have matched her cursed stare? And how many have realized, as they walk Medieval cobblestone streets bustling with people from every corner of the globe, that a story of stone, death, and irony is staring at them, silently screaming for their attention in an immovable bronze package?
When Medusa managed to tear herself away from thoughts fixated on the life she led before she was cursed, I like to think the company she kept helped make it easier for her to forget the reality of what she had become. The word “cursed” could’ve bounced around her head quite often. Mirrors were shattered and removed from her dwelling place: the island of Sarpedon. Medusa had the luxury of company in her little corner of the Mediterranean: her sisters who joined her in banishment. To suffer unfathomable grief and rage with the presence and empathy of others, to have other tangible voices speak and drown out the volume of destructive thoughts – these may have been what saved her from total madness.
A weaponized female is still a woman, and the face of villainy was still an individual subjected to forces beyond her control.
Resolving to move forward with a powerful curse to face the void of too many hours and an existence spanning countless days was all Medusa had before her death. Before she rested her head in peace to never wake up.
The voice inside her head who’s favorite word was “cursed” had taken on a body, intruded into her cave, and sliced her head clean off.
This is mine now, the body said. And that body left, returning home.
Medusa’s melded body lies atop another story, her bleeding form a sacrifice that sees the hero of that story reach his happy ending. Her statue’s relief panels are dedicated to two lovers who went on to have seven sons together. Her statue’s main focus is the man who stands atop her, clothed in nothing but a sash and ceremonial headpiece, yet clearly muscled, strong, and triumphant. Her statue is hers only in the sense of her body being its base and her head being its shock factor. Her statue is an artistic statement made by a 14th century man aiming to prove himself talented in a whole mass of similar-minded fellows all trying to create art that meant something. Her body and her face meant something to him, at least enough to be used in furthering an agenda that saw Perseus still standing, and Cellini along with him, immortalized in dark bronze.
That week I spent by myself, battling every minute against a voice who’s favorite phrase was, “your mental health won’t survive this,” was longer than I thought I could bear at times. I read the books I’d packed in my suitcase. I watched feel-good movies on Disney +. I worked on my novel. I ventured outside for food and fresh air, mask in tow. And I went through my camera roll, looking at the pictures I’d taken of everything I’d seen in Florence’s streets and art galleries. The irony hurt, but I looked anyway. I had no sisters, no company, just a disembodied voice threatening to jump on me as I slept to separate my head from my shoulders. To ask me to pose for a project and remain subjected to what I can now detect were lies. To construct a statue where my body and worry-filled head could be held by that voice that has taken on a body. The title could be something along the lines of My Curse.
But I woke up on my second to last morning in Florence, took a rapid COVID test, and looked at its negative result. There was no violence in that apartment as I made my bed, put on some real clothes, and looked at my face in the mirror, silencing my anxiety’s voice with a stony gaze.
The end of my solitude was in sight. I would be boarding a plane back to California the next morning.
I spent that first day of freedom completing my Italian cultural class final exam, reuniting with my roommates to share one last meal, and sitting in one of the squares near my apartment to avoid the reality of my inevitable departure from a city I didn’t want to leave.
I rose at 3:00am in that empty apartment. It had been a short, dreamless sleep. My body and head had ceased their aching, reminding me that I still had a head on my shoulders.
I caught a taxi to the airport. All the tourists and locals were asleep. The frosted streetlights shone through the humid mid-summer air. I looked through the car window as we passed Perseus and Medusa. I wondered at the statue’s appeal and why my eyes wandered to Perseus once the sight of Medusa’s lifeless form became too gruesome. Knowing the statue would still be standing there even after I boarded my plane was comforting. Knowing Perseus’ feet would still be resting irremovably on Medusa’s back reminded me that anxiety comes in many forms. It is capable of grasping a head of hair with a vicelike grip. But it is also capable of being silenced.
I gazed up at the unlikely pair. At the head. At the garden of statues turned away from them. And I returned home.
Works Referenced
+Greekacom. “Myth of Perseus and Andromeda - Greek Myths: Greeka.” Greekacom, +Greekacom, https://www.greeka.com/greece-myths/perseus-andromeda/.
Livingston, Leslie. “Florence's Outdoor Art: Guide To the Statues of the Piazza Della Signoria.” The Geographical Cure, 9 Nov. 2021, https://www.thegeographicalcure.com/post/statues-of-the-piazza-della-signoria.
Tognozzi, Elissa. “My Life by Benvenuto Cellini, The Literary Work.” Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/my-life-0#:~:text=Cellini%20recounts%20his%20adventures%20and,justify%20his%20character%20and%20behaviors.
Wikipedia. “Perseus with the Head of Medusa.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Aug. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseus_with_the_Head_of_Medusa.
Wray, James. “Perseus and the Head of Medusa - A Very Florentine Story.” DailyArt Magazine, 22 May 2019, https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/perseus-and-the-head-of-medusa/.
All Text Copyright (C) 2023 Meghan Coley