The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of April 25, 2024
Doorknocker with Gorgon Head
mid 1500s
Overall: 25.4 x 19.7 x 6.9 cm (10 x 7 3/4 x 2 11/16 in.)
Location: 118 Italian Renaissance
Description
Venice was a center for numerous bronze founders who made elaborate doorknockers for palace doors throughout the city. Although utilitarian, these objects were meant to impress as works of art in their own right. The presence of snakes that coil from this fearsome head suggest that this is Medusa, one of the three demon sisters in Greek mythology known as the Gorgons. According to some legends, Medusa was an attractive woman who, after having an affair with the god Poseidon in Athena's temple, was transformed by the goddess into a serpent-haired beast. Her visage was so terrifying that anyone who looked at it was turned to stone. The hero Perseus was ordered to decapitate Medusa, and Athena subsequently placed the monstrous head in the center of her shield. The use of the Gorgon's head as an ancient motif and protective symbol to avert evil developed from this fabled act. Such literary and iconographic traditions were known to Renaissance artists, and the presence of a Gorgon head on a doorknocker almost certainly evokes its guarding function for a Venetian home.- Robert Mayer (Vienna, Austria), sold through the Paul Drey Gallery (New York, New York) to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1972.
- The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 109 archive.org
- The Triumph of Humanism. Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA (organizer) (October 22, 1977-January 9, 1978).Year in Review: 1972. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 27-March 18, 1973).
- {{cite web|title=Doorknocker with Gorgon Head|url=false|author=|year=mid 1500s|access-date=25 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1972.1