I’m looking for a marble sculpture I saw in a book when I was a kid. I assume it was a depiction of a mythological story in which a man kills a woman with a sword. In the sculpture, a man is standing over a prostrate woman, holding an upraised sword. He may be holding her hair with the other hand. He may be wearing a winged helmet (fuzzy memory) so he may be a god slaying a mortal. Were many women cut down with swords in those old stories?
Perseus, killing Medusa?
This one has him holding her by the hair.
But this one has the winged helmet.
Four wings and a wang.
I think that first one might be it. My greatest memory of it was her breasts, which I thought were well done.
Is that statue an accurate depiction of what happened?
Anyone who looked at Medusa would turn to stone so Perseus borrowed a polished shield from Athena and looking at Medusa’s reflection through the shield, he was able to approach her and slice off her head.
I don’t see the shield.
Seriously?
Good heavens.
Her breasts seem quite a bit larger than one usually sees in Greek sculptures. I guess that’s how we’re supposed to know she’s a Bad Girl? (Besides the head full of snakes, I mean.)
She had snake heads instead of hair, which was scary; but her sister had snake tails, and when she got angry she’d shake her head spraying poo everywhere!
The story of Medusa:
She was a beautiful young woman vowed to celibate service in the temple of Athena, who was raped there by Poseidon. Athena punished the girl for being raped (breaking her vow and defiling the temple) by turning her into a Gorgon, a snake-haired monster who turns all who look at her to stone.
Perseus cut off her head while she was sleeping and put it in a bag, taking it out to kill Polydectes who had sent him on this hopefully-fatal quest so as to get him out of the way to abuse Perseus’ mother Danae.
It’s a fun Greek story.
I think that, most likely, it just means that the sculptor liked large-breasted women. And I don’t think that’s a Greek statue-- It’s too well-preserved. I think it’s a Renaissance statue depicting a Greek myth.
As for “what really happened”, there are many different versions of the myth. In some, reflections don’t count, for the turning-into-stone effect, so Perseus fought (with a sword) while looking into the mirrored shield. In other versions, reflections DO count, and he slew her by showing her her own reflection in the shield. Sometimes it’s her severed head that he later uses as a weapon, and sometimes her image became permanently locked in to the shield. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a version of the myth where he didn’t even have the shield at all at the time he slew her. @CalMeacham would know more.
I tried a Google Image search for that photo and it appears to be a modern sculpture by a 3D artist (and based on his other pieces, yes, he likes large breasts).
Right you are! In almost all the ancient accounts Perseus doesn’t use a mirror – he simply averts his head. The myth might have been influenced by the many sculptural and vase painting depictions in which Perseus is pointedly NOT looking at Medusa
https://museum.classics.cam.ac.uk/collections/casts/temple-c-selinus-two-metopes
https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/R47.2.html
In fact, it’s rare to find depictions of Perseus with a shield at this point, (so such versions certainly do exist) let alone using the shield to decapitate Medusa. Here’s a rare example that might show this:
As for medusa looking into the mirror and turning herself into stone, that seems to be a modern concept. I don’t encounter it before the last century (It’d be pretty awkward, too – she had two gorgon sisters. They would’ve petrified each other in no time).
The whole petrifying thing doesn’t really feature much in the old myths. You’d expect Medusa to be surrounded by a “garden” of petrified people (as she is shown in the 1963 film Perseo l’Invincicle or in both versions of Clash of the Titans or in the first Percy Jackson movie The Lightning Thief. - but I think I’ve fou8nd only one ancient reference to that. Note also that none of the Gorgons in the above pictures have snakes in place of hair – that’s more of a Renaissance notion. The real signs of the Gorgon are huge, staring eyes, a broad rictus grin (often with fangs) and often a beard.
Something about the story gets all different kinds of people worked up, to this day.
Early Greek version of blaming the victim!
A better fit for the OP’s description might be the Carlsberg Glyptotek version of the statue of Perseus by Laurent Honoré Marqueste.
Classical men overpowering women with prominent breasts was more of a thing for nineteenth-century sculptors than ancient Greek ones. For example, immediately behind the Cellini statue in the Loggia dei Lanzi is Pio Fedi’s Rape of Polyxena.
