Perseus` ancestry

Perseus’ ancestry What to remember especially about Perseus? The most important descendent of Io The Argive kings descend from Perseus Hypermnestra preserves the lineage’s nobility (her sisters are the Danaids of underworld fame) Argolid (the territory of Argos) is Greece’s most ancient center Perseus is important as progenitor of Heracles Acrisius’s aCempt to subvert fate: Danae in the tower Danae in the chest The constellaEons that catasterize the Andromeda story are among the oldest idenEfied Greek constellaEons, the first with coherent mythological narraEve. ... and he killed the Gorgon, Medusa Laurent-­‐Honoré Marqueste , “Perseus and Medusa," marble 1903, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek OGCMA0874PerseusMedusa__Marqueste Mastery Image In this detail of Marqueste’s sculpture, the mouths of the sankes (Medusa’s hair) take the same shape as the gorgon’s mouth. The sculptor has given her a human tongue, while the snakes’ tongues flicker up Perseus’ arm. Her nudity probably intensifies the vulnerability of this dangerous creature. Her eyes are doing their best to look up at the hero’s eyes, to petrify him. Compare this intense moment before the gorgon’s death to the aOermath, depicted by most arEsts (e.g. Cellini and Caravaggio). (click the images below) Follow link for other hCp://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/images/conway/d0b34c17.html views of this sculpture. Caravaggio Medusa's head Mastery Image OGCMA0650Medusa_Caravaggio Benvenuto Cellini "
Perseus" bronze 1546 -­‐ 54, Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence (copies everywhere) hCp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Perseus_Cellini_Loggia_dei_Lanzi_2005_09_13.jpg OGCMA0872PerseusMedusa_Cellini Mastery Image Mythologically, Perseus wears the special cap that allows him invisibility. His sword has a specialized curve in the blade, the arEst’s concepEon of a scimitar. Medusa’s head has snaky tresses, and, because her eyes are closed, she has been rendered momentarily benign, a dangerously potent tool subject now to Perseus’ whim. Perseus strides triumphantly over the crumpled body of the gorgon. Gore surges from the decapitaEon wound, both from the severed neck and from the severed head. Commissioned by Cosimo de Medici, the Duke of Florence, as a symbol of his own “conquest over the Gorgon of tyrannicide and of Republican parEsanship.” B.Cellini Autobiography LIII, trans. J.A.Symonds (New York 1910). One of Cellini’s most important works, this bronze original stands sheltered in the Loggia dei Lanzi but in the open air for FlorenEnes and visitors to consider today. Sir Edward Coley Burne-­‐
Jones, “The Baleful Head”, 1886, StuXgart, Staatsgallerie Mastery Image Burne-­‐Jones’ Perseus Cycle, no. 8 hCp://www.victorianweb.org/
painEng/bj/painEngs/p8.html Painted version of stories narrated by William Morris, The Doom of King Acrisius 1.276-­‐77 hCp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Burne-­‐Jones.jpg Flamsteed’s Atlas Coeles*s, 1776: Andromeda and Perseus Mastery Image Nicholas Thornhill is arEst Jam Flamsteed is Astronomer Royal 1776 The astronomy in this view of the sky is based upon Claudius Ptolemeus (2nd century AD), which Flamsteed used as the ulEmate basis for his own work as the official astronomer of England at the Greenwich Observatory. Since anEquity, observers of the constellaEons traced the interacEon of Andromeda, Cassiopeia, and Perseus. Greek astronomers used these names, but their Babylonian forebears called the constellaEon we know as Perseus the “old man”. The figure’s leO hand holds the Gorgon’s head, the bright star called by the Babylonians “Algol.” hCp://www.lindahall.org/services/digital/ebooks/flamsteed1776/flamsteed18.shtml