Study for the head of Medusa for 'The Finding of Medusa'

The Finding of Medusa is part of the Perseus Series, commissioned by Arthur Balfour, the future Tory prime minister and a leading member of the social set known as 'The Souls', in 1875. They were to decorate the music room at his London house, 4 Carlton Gardens, but many remained unfinished at Burne-Jones's death twenty-three years later. The final oil versions are in the Staatgalerie, Stuttgart, while a magnificent set of full-scale gouache cartoons is in the Southampton Art Gallery.

The Finding of Medusa is one of the most dramatic designs not only in the Perseus series but in Burne-Jones's oeuvre as a whole. Medusa is the Gorgon whose head turns all who see it to stone, and Perseus needs it to defeat the sea monster to which Andromeda, the heroine of the story, is to be sacrificed. The painting shows him approaching with the intention of severing her head, avoiding looking at her directly by watching her in a mirror given to him by the goddess Minerva. Medusa awaits her doom apprehensively, while her two sisters, for one of whom the present drawing is a study, crouch in terror.

The final painting was never started, but the cartoon at Southampton (fig. 1) is a superb creation, powerfully conceived and handled with astonishing freedom. A later cartoon, somewhat unresolved and confused, represents the design at Stuttgart.

There are studies for The Finding of Medusa dating from the early 1880s, but Burne-Jones then put the subject aside to concentrate on later scenes illustrating the rescue of Andromeda. Only after these canvases had been exhibited in 1887-8 did he return to the Medusa theme, noting in his work-record for 1890 how he 'worked all summer at the Medusa part of the Perseus story'. The present drawing, which is dated 1890, was clearly made at this period.