Caravaggio painted his Medusa around 1597 on a round wooden shield, as a present. Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, the Grand Duke of Tuscany's ambassador in Rome, sent it to Florence in 1598 for Ferdinando I de' Medici. The subject suited a gift for a ruler: in the myth, Perseus kills Medusa by looking only at her reflection in a shield given to him by Athena.
Caravaggio did not paint her as a monster at rest. He painted the second after the blade, with the mouth open, the eyes wide, blood at the neck and snakes still twisting in her hair.
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A shield with Medusa on it is supposed to frighten an enemy. This one was never going to meet one.
It is a disc of poplar wood under canvas, made for display and not for a fight. Yet the picture on it still looks as if it had a job to do. Nobody has settled whose face is screaming there, and an old Florentine story suggests Caravaggio was not the first painter to put a monster on a round board.
A cardinal sent a Grand Duke a piece of armor that could never protect him. He chose the subject for a reason the Medici understood.
What did a cardinal want with a shield?
A gift for the Medici, first of all. Del Monte was Caravaggio's patron and the Grand Duke's man in Rome, and in 1598 the shield went to Florence, where it entered the Medici collections.
The subject was chosen with care. Athena's shield is the one that made the killing of Medusa possible, and the Uffizi notes that the Medici often used this imagery to stand for their military power. A ruler who owned a Medusa on a shield owned a little of that protection.
The poet Gaspare Murtola understood the effect. In his verses on the painting he told the viewer to run: if the sight froze your eyes in amazement, she would turn you to stone as well.
What You'll Discover
What the shield is made of.
Who painted a shield like this first.
Whose face is screaming.