Medusa Murtola

Caravaggio painted this severed head of Medusa not on a flat canvas but on a round wooden shield, curved like a real piece of armour. In the Greek story Medusa turned anyone who met her eyes to stone, and a hero could only kill her by watching her reflection. Caravaggio catches the instant just after the blow, the head still shrieking and the blood still running, snakes writhing where her hair should be. The face, some say, is a version of his own. This is the earlier of two shields he painted on the subject, and it takes its nickname from the poet Gaspare Murtola, who wrote a few lines warning viewers to flee before the painted gorgon turned them to stone.