Sketch for Perseus on Pegasus Slaying Medusa

In the oldest Greek versions of the story, Perseus never rides Pegasus. He flies to the Gorgons on winged sandals, and the winged horse only comes into the world at the moment of Medusa's death, springing from her severed neck. The hero who later rides him is Bellerophon. Later writers and painters joined the two stories together, and Sargent followed them. This sketch in oil and pencil, made between 1922 and 1924, plans one of his ceiling paintings for the museum's main staircase. In the finished canvas, about three and a half metres high, Perseus sits astride the rearing horse and holds the Gorgon's head out to a figure behind him, while Medusa's headless body lies under the hooves, the body Pegasus was born from. The sketch stayed in Sargent's studio, and his two sisters gave it to the museum in 1929.