The image is stark and shocking. A decapitated head, her eyes open, her mouth agape in a silent scream, her hair a nest of still-hissing snakes. Blood pours out from her severed neck. She is not quite alive, but she is not yet dead either.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s Head of Medusa (1597) remains one of the most memorable images of Italian baroque art. Now in Florence’s Uffizi gallery, it tells the story of the “monster” Medusa, the snake-headed Gorgon whose stare turns whoever dares look at her to stone.
