The Petrifying Gaze of Medusa: Ambivalence, Explexis, and the Sublime

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640),  Medusa, ca. 1618, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum

The Dutch art theorists Junius and van Hoogstraten describe the sublime, much more explicitly and insistently than in Longinus’s text, as the power of images to petrify the viewer and to stay fixed in their memory. This effect can be related to Longinus’s distinction between poetry and prose. Prose employs the strategy of enargeia; poetry that of ekplexis, or shattering the listener or reader. This essay traces the notion of ekplexis in Greek rhetoric, particularly in Hermogenes, and shows the connections in etymology, myth, and pictorial traditions, between the petrifying powers of art and the myth of Medusa.

DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2016.8.2.3

Acknowledgements

This article was written with the support of the ERC starting grant “Elevated Minds” (Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society) and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640),  Medusa,  ca. 1618,  Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Fig. 1 Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Medusa, ca. 1618, oil on canvas, 68.5 x 118 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (artwork in the public domain; photo: KHM-Museumsverband) [side-by-side viewer]
Artus Quellinus (1609–1668),  Medusa,  1650–52,  Amsterdam, Koninklijk Paleis
Fig. 2 Artus Quellinus (1609–1668), Medusa, 1650–52, marble, 70 x 25 cm. Amsterdam, Koninklijk Paleis (artwork in the public domain: photo: Tom Haartsen 2015) [side-by-side viewer]
Gerrit Berckheyde (1638–1698),  View of the Town Hall of Amsterdam, Amersfoort, Bruikleen Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed
Fig. 3 Gerrit Berckheyde (1638–1698), View of the Town Hall of Amsterdam, oil on canvas, 75.5 x 91.5 cm. Amersfoort, Bruikleen Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hans Speeckaert (1535–1575/80,  Allegory of Sculpture, 1582,
Fig. 4 Hans Speeckaert (1535–1575/80, Allegory of Sculpture, 1582, etching (artwork in the public domain; photo: Wikimedia Commons) [side-by-side viewer]
Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734),  Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Med,  ca. 1705–10,  Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum
Fig. 5 Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734), Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Medusa, ca. 1705–10, oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. no. 86.PA.591 (artwork in the public domain; digital image courtesy of Getty Open Content Program) [side-by-side viewer]
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640),  Temple of Janus (sketch for the Joyous Entry of, 1634,  St. Petersburg, State Museum of the Hermitage
Fig. 6 Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Temple of Janus (sketch for the Joyous Entry of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand), 1634, oil on panel, 70 x 65.5 cm. St. Petersburg, State Museum of the Hermitage (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Theodoor van Thulden (1606–1669), after Peter Paul Rubens,  The Temple of Janus, (from Johannes Casper Geva, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Fig. 7 Theodoor van Thulden (1606–1669), after Peter Paul Rubens, The Temple of Janus, etching, 531 _ 454 mm (from Johannes Casper Gevartius, Pompa Introïtus Ferdinandi [Antwerp, 1641]). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-OB-70.270 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Primaticcio (1504–1570), Grotte des Pins, begun ca. 1528, Château de Fontainebleau
Fig. 8 Primaticcio (1504–1570), Grotte des Pins, begun ca. 1528, Château de Fontainebleau (artwork in the public domain; photo: author) [side-by-side viewer]
Primaticcio (1504–1570),  Apartment of the duchesse d’Étampes (detail sh,  1541–44,  Château de Fontainebleau
Fig. 9 Primaticcio (1504–1570), apartment of the duchesse d’Étampes (detail showing caryatids), 1541–44, Château de Fontainebleau (artwork in the public domain; photo: ©Château de Fontainebleau - RMN/Jean-Pierre Lagiewski) [side-by-side viewer]
Attributed to Jacopo Zucchi (1540–1595/6),  Design for a Fountain with Perseus Killing Medus,  ca. 1600,  Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Estampes
Fig. 10 Attributed to Jacopo Zucchi (1540–1595/6), Design for a Fountain with Perseus Killing Medusa and Pegasus, ca. 1600, pen and brown ink, brown wash, 45.7 x 33.4 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Estampes, inv. no. 4553 (recto) (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640),  Study of the Farnese Hercules, London, The Courtauld Gallery
Fig. 11 Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Study of the Farnese Hercules, pen and ink on paper, 15.3 cm x 19.6 cm. London, The Courtauld Gallery, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, inv. no. D.1978.PG.427 (recto) (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Leonaert Bramer (1596–1674),  Perseus,  date unknown, Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Estampes
Fig. 12 Leonaert Bramer (1596–1674), Perseus, date unknown, gray ink and wash on gray paper, 20.9 x 30.5 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Estampes, inv. no. 22528 (recto) (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Attributed to Bertholet Flémalle (1614–1675),  Perseus Brandishing the Head of Medusa,  ca. 1650,  London, National Gallery
Fig. 13 Attributed to Bertholet Flémalle (1614–1675), Perseus Brandishing the Head of Medusa, ca. 1650, oil on canvas, 165 x 243.4 cm. London, National Gallery (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Son of Niobe (Roman copy, possibly after Scopas, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
Fig. 14 Son of Niobe (Roman copy, possibly after Scopas and Praxiteles, formerly in the garden of the Villa Medici in Rome), marble, h: 160 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (artwork in the public domain; photo: Wikipedia Commons) [side-by-side viewer]
Gijsbert van Veen (1562–1628), Allegory Showing the Duke of Parma as Defender of,  1585–92, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Fig. 15 Gijsbert van Veen (1562–1628), Allegory Showing the Duke of Parma as Defender of the Catholic Faith in the Low Countries, 1585–92, engraving. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-OB-79.754 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frederik Boutatts, after unknown artist, Perseus Defeating Phineus by Showing Him the Head ,
Fig. 16 Frederik Boutatts, after unknown artist, Perseus Defeating Phineus by Showing Him the Head of Medusa (from the 1703 edition of Joost van den Vondel, Publius Ovidius Nasoos Herscheppinge vertaelt door Joost van den Vondel, originally published in Amsterdam, 1671) (artwork in the public domain; photo: Wikipedia Commons). [side-by-side viewer]
  1. 1. De jeugd van Constantijn Huygens door hemzelf beschreven, ed. Albert H. Kan (Rotterdam and Antwerp: Donker, 1971), 74–75: “Het is me, alsof ik van zijn vele schilderijen altijd één voor oogen heb. . . . Het stelt het afgehouwen hoofd van Medusa voor, omwonden door slangen, die uit het haar tevoorschijn komen. Daarin heeft hij de aanblik van een wonderschoone vrouw, die nog bekoorlijk is maar toch afgrijzen wekt, doordat de dood juist is ingetreden en ongure slangen om haar slapen hangen, met zulk een onuitsprekelijk overleg gecomponeerd, dat den beschouwer plotseling een schrik bevangt—het is namelijk gewoonlijk door een doek bedekt—maar dat hij toch ondanks het ijselijke van de voorstelling geniet, omdat ze levendig en mooi is.” The autobiography dates from 1629–31. On the relation between Rubens and Huygens, see Lieven Rens, “Rubens en de literatuur van zijn tijd,” Dietsche Warande en Belfort 122 (1977): 328–66; on Huygens, Rubens’s Medusa, and the sublime, see most recently Jürgen Pieters, “De blik van Medusa,” in De tranen der herinnering: Het gesprek met de doden (Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 2005), 130–66; on Rubens’s Medusas, see Walter Prohaska in Peter Paul Rubens 1577–1640, exh. cat. (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1977), 81–83; Peter Sutton in The Age of Rubens, ed. P. Sutton, exh. cat. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1993), 245–47; Marion van der Meulen and Arnout Balis, eds., Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vols. 23/2 and 23/3, Copies after the Antique (London and Philadelphia: Brepols, 1994–95), figs 345, 346, 350, and 351. All translations unless otherwise indicated are by the author.

  2. 2. Longinus, On the Sublime, 1.4, 1.7, and 7.3. All translations are from the Loeb Edition: Longinus on the Sublime. revised by Donald Russell, translated by W. H. Fyfe, (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1995). http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/dlcl.longinus-sublime.1995

  3. 3. Franciscus Junius, The Painting of the Ancients (London: printed by R. Hodgkinsonne, 1638), 290; Junius, De schilder-konst der Oude (Middelburg: Zacharias Roman, 1641), 323–24: “sich aen de selvighe stucken met sulcken diepen verwonderinghe vergaepen, datse als door een verruckte verslaegenheyd schijnen gheslagehen te sie jn.”

  4. 4. Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst (Rotterdam: François van Hoogstraten, 1678), 179: “[D]at is waerlijk groots . . . ’t welk ons t’elens wederom als versch voor d’oogen verschijnt; ’t welk ons zwaer, of liever onmogelijk is uit de zin te stellen; welkers gedachtenisse geduerich, en als onuitwisselijk, in onze herten schijnt ingedrukt.”

  5. 5. Longinus, On the Sublime, 1.4. http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/dlcl.longinus-sublime.1995

  6. 6. Ibid., 15.1–2.

  7. 7. Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 1–8.

  8. 8. Aristotle, De anima, 432a9–10.

  9. 9. Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 248.

  10. 10. “Rather than making one see an illusion, [enargeia] creates the illusion of the act of seeing.” Ruth Webb, “Mémoire et imagination: les limites de l’enargeia dans la théorie rhétorique grecque,” in Dire l’Evidence (philosophie et rhétorique antiques) ed. Colette Lévy and Louis Pernot (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), 248.

  11. 11. The most influential ancient statements about the relation between poetry and the visual arts are by Aristotle (Poetics, 1448a and 1450a); Simonides, for instance as reported by the Auctor ad Herennium, 4.39 (“Poema loquens pictura est, pictura tacitum poema debet esse); Philostratus, Eikones, 1.1 and 2.2.1; and Dio Chrysosotomus, XIIth Olympian Discourse, 12.82, on the relative merits of sculpture and epic poetry. For a historical overview, see Gert Üding et al., eds., Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik (Tübingen: Walter Degruyter, 1992–2000), s.v. “Malerei” and “Paragone.” For Netherlandish artistic theory, see Jochem Becker, “Lucas de Heere,” Simiolus 6 (1972/73): 113–27; Becker, “Domenicus Lampsonius,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 24 (1973): 45–61; Karel van Mander, Den grondt der edel vry schilder-const, ed. Hessel Miedema (Utrecht: Haentjens, Dekker, & Gumbert, 1973), vol. 1, prologue and chapt. 1; Philipp Fehl, “Franciscus Junius and the Defence of the Arts,” Artibus et Historiae 3 (1981): 9–55; Colette Nativel, “La comparaison entre la poésie et la peinture dans le De pictura veterum (I.4) de Franciscus Junius,” Word and Image 4 (1988): 323–30; Philips Angel, “Praise of Painting, translated by Michael Hoyle, with an introduction and commentary by Hessel Miedema,” Simiolus 24 (1996): 227–58; Franciscus Junius, introduction to Gerardus Johannes Vossius, De quatuor artibus popularibus (Amsterdam: Ioannes Blaeu, 1650); Cornelis de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edele vry Schilder-const (Amsterdam: Ian Meyssens, 1661–62), 22, 467–71; and W. Goeree, Inleydingh tot de Practijck der Al-gemeene Schilderkonst (Middelburg: Wilhelmus Goeree, 1670), 22–26.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3780840
    http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/dlcl.aristotle-poetics.1995
    http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3780438
    http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1483099
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02666286.1988.10436251

  12. 12. On ekplexis and the related kataplêxis, which are not very common terms outside rhetoric and poetics, see also Aristotle, Poetics, 1460b25; and Eugenio Refini, “Longinus and Poetic Imagination in Late Renaissance Literary Theory,” in Translations of the Sublime: The Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of the Peri Hupsous in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture, and the Theatre, ed. Caroline A. van Eck, Stijn Bussels, Maarten Delbeke, and Jürgen Pieters. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 45–46.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/dlcl.aristotle-poetics.1995
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004234338_004

  13. 13. Longinus, Peri hypsous, 12.4 and 34.4.

  14. 14. The editio princeps was published by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1508–9, in his famous volume of rhetorical treatises, Aphonii Sophistae Progymnasmata (vol. 1, pp. 545–73). The first Latin edition was made by Pier Vettori: Petri Victorii Commentarii in Librum Demetrii Phalerei de Eloquentia (Florence: Giunti, 1572). This was dedicated by the academician Vettori to Cosimo I of Florence. A partial Latin translation was published in Antwerp by Johannes Sambucus in 1567: Demetrii Phalerei De Epistolis Doctrina (Antwerp: Ex Officio Chrstophori Plantini, 1567). For the early edition and dissemination history, see Bernard Weinberg, “Translations and Commentaries of Demetrius’ On Style to 1600: A Bibliography,” Philological Quarterly 30 (1951): 353–58; but much remains to be done, in particularly on the possible impact of Demetrius’s mixture of the terrible and the comic or the grotesque and its possible impact on Netherlandish art. The best recent editions of Demetrius are the Budé edition by P. Chiron: Du Style (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1993) and by G. Marpurgo-Tagliabue: Demetrio: Dello stile (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1980).

  15. 15. Demetrius, On Style, sect. 283.

  16. 16. Ibid., sect. 258.

  17. 17. Giovanni Lombardo, “Sublime et deinotès dans l’antiquité gréco-latine”: www.cairn.info/article_p.php?ID_ARTICLE=RPHI_034_0403; consulted on April 4, 2015.

  18. 18. Lombardo suggests this but does not quote any sources. The most important are: Hesiod (attr.), The Shield of Heracles, lines 226–37; Pindar, Pythian Ode, 12.12–15, on the Gorgon’s deinos character; on their petrifying agency, see, for example, Apollodorus, Library and Epitome , 11.4.2; Lucian, The Hall, chapt. 19. The latter is also of interest in the context of this essay because Lucan uses a comparison with the petrifying powers of the Gorgons to bolster his argument that images make a far stronger and more lasting impression than words. For the cultural and religious context of the Gorgons, see Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Persée, la mort, l’image,” in L’Univers, les dieux, les hommes (1999; repr., Paris: Seuil, 2007), 133–41; Vernant, “Le Masque de Gorgô,” in La Mort dans les yeux: Figures de l’autre en Grèce ancienne (1985; repr., Paris: Seuil, 2007) 1488–93; Vernant, “Figures du masque en Grèce ancienne,” in Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne, Vernant and Pierre Vidal Naquet (1986; repr., Paris: Seuil, 2007), 1188–1202; Françoise Frontisi-Dutroux, “La Gorgone, paradigme de creation d’images,” in Les Cahiers du Collège Iconique: Communications et Débats 1 (Paris: La Diffusion Française, 1993); English translation in The Medusa Reader, ed. Marjorie Garber and Nancy J. Vickers (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 262–67.

  19. 19. Demetrius, On Style, sect. 283. He refers to Odyssey, 9.369–70.

  20. 20. Everard Meyster, Hemelsch Land-spel of Goden Kout. . . (Amsterdam: Gedruckt voor de Lief-hebbers, 1655), 78: “. . . het helsch gedrocht/Erynnis, en Medus,’ ons levend hadden willen/Versccheuren en vertreen; wy staen schier noch en trillen,/Als wy’r gedenken aen, my dunkt, sy volgen noch.”

  21. 21. Pieter Rixtel, “Op het Stadthuys van Amsterdam, Geschildert door den vermaerden Schilder Gerrit Berkheyden van Haerlem,” in Mengel-Rymen (Haarlem: Vincent Casteleyn, 1669), 42: “Wanneer de Zon myn ‘t Voorhooft streelt,/Door ‘t Gout, en Marm’re Beelden speelt,/Kan geen nieusgierige in zyn Oogen,/De glans van ’t witte Albast gedoogen,/Maer staet, de Steen aen-ziende, als een/Die selfs verandert is in Steen.”

  22. 22. The literature on both myths and their artistic representations is vast. On Pygmalion, see most recently, Kenneth Gross, The Dream of the Moving Statue (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992); and Victor Stoichita: The Pygmalion Effect: From Ovid to Hitchcock, trans. Andrew Anderson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); on Medusa, see the exhibition catalogues: Werner Hofmann, ed., Zauber der Medusa: Europäische Manierismen (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1987); Valentina Conticelli, ed., Medusa, Il mito, l’antico e i Medici (Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi/Electa, 2008); Caterina Caneva, ed., La Medusa del Caravaggio restaurata (Rome: Musei Capitolini/Electa, 2002); and Elena Bianca di Gioia,ed., La Medusa di Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Studi e restauri (Rome: Musei Capitolini/Electa, 2007).

  23. 23. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.252–58. http://etext.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/trans/Ovhome.htm – askline (translation Anthony S. Kline); consulted on January 24, 2012:

    . . . ars adeo latet arte sua. Miratur et haurit

    pectore Pygmalion simulati corporis ignes.

    Saepe manus operi temptantes admovet,

    an sit corpus, an illud ebur. Nec adhuc ebur esse fatetur.

    Oscula dat redditque putat loquiturque tenetque,

    et credit tactis digitos insidere membris

    et metuit, pressos veniat ne livor in artus.”

  24. 24. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.275–76.

  25. 25. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 5.1–236, translated by Rolfe Humhries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1955), in particular lines 183: in hoc haesit signum de marmore gestu; 197: Incursus erat: tenuit vestigia tellus/inmotusque silex armataque mansit imago; 205: Dum stupet Astyages naturam traxit eandem/marmoreoque manet vultus mirantis in ore; and 211–214: Simulacra videt diversa figuris/agnoscitque suos et nomine quemque vocatum/poscit opem, credensque parum sibi proxima tangit/corpora : marmor erant [italics added].

  26. 26. Frontisi-Ducroux: “La Gorgone, paradigme de creation d’images.” See also the fundamental study by Jean-Pierre Vernant: La mort dans les yeux, in Jean-Pierre Vernant, Oeuvres. Religions. Rationalités. Politique (1985; repr., Paris: Seuil, 2007), 2:1477–1525.

  27. 27. Caroline A. van Eck, “Animation and Petrifaction in Rubens’s Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi,” in Art, Music and Spectacle in the Age of Rubens: The Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi, ed. Anna Knaap and Michael Putnam (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 143–67.

  28. 28. Sebastiano Serlio, Livre Extraordinaire de architecture/Extraordinario Libro di Architettura (Lyons: Guillaume Roville, 1558), pls. XX and XXIX (of the rustic series).

  29. 29. Karel van Mander, Uytleggingh op den Metamorphosis Pub. Ovidii Nasonis . . . (Amsterdam: Cornelis Lodewijcksz. van der Plasse, 1616), fol. 35; Joost van den Vondel, Publius Ovidius Nasoos Herscheppinge vertaelt door Joost van den Vondel (Amsterdam: Van Wees, 1671). In this edition the illustrations are rough copies of the images by Antonio Tempesta for the translation by Pieter de Iode published in Antwerp in 1606. On Dutch editions of Ovid and their illustrations, see M. D. Henkel, “Nederlandsche Ovidius-Illustraties van de 15e tot de 18e Eeuw,” Oud-Holland 39 (1921): 149–182; see also Eric Jan Sluijter, De Heydensche Fabulen in de Schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2009) for the general context of Dutch representations of Ovid; and the very useful website Ovid Illustrated: The Reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Image and Text, curated by Daniel Kinsley with Elizabeth Styron(http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/ovidillust.html).
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187501721X00206

  30. 30. For this anecdote, see Maarten Delbeke, “Elevated Twins and the Vicious Sublime: Gianlorenzo Bernini and Louis XIV,” in Translations of the Sublime, ed. Caroline A. van Eck et al. (see note 12 above ), 117–38.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004234338_008

  31. 31. F. Frontisi-Ducroux, “Les limites de l’anthropomorphisme: Hermès et Dionysos,” in Corps des Dieux, ed. Charles Malamoud and Jean-Pierre Vernant (Paris: Folio, 1986), 259–87. On the origins of herms, see also Hetty Goldman, “The Origins of the Greek Herm,” American Journal of Archaeology 46 (1942): 57–68, and Anna Donohue, Xoana and the Origins of Greek Sculpture (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 217–8.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/499105

  32. 32. Aristotle, Poetics, 4.2.1448b and Rhetoric 1.2.9.137b. http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/dlcl.aristotle-poetics.1995

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Junius, Franciscus. The Painting of the Ancients. London: printed by R. Hodgkinsonne, 1639.

Junius, Franciscus. De schilder-konst der Oude. Amsterdam: Zacharias Roman, 1641.

Junius, Franciscus. Introduction to Gerardus Johannes Vossius, De quatuor artibus popularibus. Amsterdam: Ioannes Blaeu, 1650.

Lombardo, Giovanni. “Sublime et deinotès dans l’antiquité gréco-latine.” http://www.cairn.info/article_p.php?ID_ARTICLE=RPHI_034_0403. Consulted on April 4, 2015.

Longinus. On the Sublime. Translated by W. H. Fyfe. Revised by Donald Russell. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1995. http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/dlcl.longinus-sublime.1995

Mander, Karel van. Den grondt der edel vry schilder-const. Edited by Hessel Miedema. Utrecht: Haentjens, Dekker & Gumbert, 1973.

Mander, Karel van. Uytleggingh op den Metamorphosis Pub. Ovidii Nasonis . . . Amsterdam: Cornelis Lodewijcksz. van der Plasse, 1616.

Meulen, Marion van der, and Arnout Balis, eds. Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard. Vols. 23/2 and 23/3, Copies after the Antique. London and Philadelphia: Brepols, 1994–95.

Meyster, Everard. Hemelsch Land-spel of Goden Kout. . . . Amsterdam: Gedruckt voor de Lief-hebbers, 1655.

Nativel, Colette. “La comparaison entre la poésie et la peinture dans le De pictura veterum (I.4) de Franciscus Junius.” Word and Image 4 (1988): 323–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02666286.1988.10436251

Ovid Illustrated: The Representation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Image and Text. Curated by Daniel Kinsley with Elizabeth Styron (http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/ovidillust.html).

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Rolfe Humhries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955.

Pieters, Jürgen. “De blik van Medusa.” In De tranen der herinnering: Het gesprek met de doden, 130–66. Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 2005.

Prohaska, Walter, ed. Peter Paul Rubens 1577–1640. Exh. cat. Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1977.

Refini, Eugenio. “Longinus and Poetic Imagination in Late Renaissance Literary Theory.” In Translations of the Sublime: The Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of the Peri Hupsous in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture and the Theatre, edited by Caroline van Eck, Stijn Bussels, Maarten Delbeke, and Jürgen Pieters, 45–65. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004234338_004

Rens, Lieven. “Rubens en de literatuur van zijn tijd.” Dietsche Warande en Belfort 122 (1977): 328–66.

Rixtel, Pieter. “Op het Stadthuys van Amsterdam, Geschildert door den vermaerden Schilder Gerrit Berkheyden van Haerlem.” In Mengel-Rymen, 42. Haarlem: Vincent Casteleyn, 1669.

Serlio, Sebastiano. Livre Extraordinaire de architecture/Extraordinario Libro di Architettura. Lyons: Guillaume Roville, 1558.

Sluijter, Eric Jan. De Heydensche Fabulen in de Schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw. Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2009.

Stoichita, Victor. The Pygmalion Effect: From Ovid to Hitchcock. Translated by Andrew Anderson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Sutton, Peter, ed. The Age of Rubens. Exh. cat. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1993.

Üding, Gert et al., eds. Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik. Tübingen: Walter Degruyter 1992–2000.

Vondel, Joost van den. Publius Ovidius Nasoos Herscheppinge vertaelt door Joost van den Vondel. Amsterdam: Van Wees, 1671.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, and Pierre Vidal Naquet. Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne. 1986. Reprint, Paris: Seuil, 2007.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre. La Mort dans les Yeux: Figures de l’Autre en Grèce ancienne. 1985. Reprint, Paris: Seuil, 2007.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre. L’Univers, les dieux, les hommes. 1999. Reprint, Paris: Seuil, 2007.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre. La mort dans les yeux. In Oeuvres. Religions. Rationalités. Politique, vol. 2, 1477–1525. 1985. Reprint, Paris: Seuil, 2007.

Webb, Ruth. “Mémoire et imagination: Les limites de l’enargeia dans la théorie rhétorique grecque.” In Dire l’Evidence (philosophie et rhétorique antiques), edited by Colette Lévy and Louis Pernot, 229–48. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997.

Webb, Ruth. Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.

Weinberg, Bernard. “Translations and Commentaries of Demetrius’ On Style to 1600: A Bibliography.” Philological Quarterly 30 (1951): 353–58.

List of Illustrations

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640),  Medusa,  ca. 1618,  Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Fig. 1 Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Medusa, ca. 1618, oil on canvas, 68.5 x 118 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (artwork in the public domain; photo: KHM-Museumsverband) [side-by-side viewer]
Artus Quellinus (1609–1668),  Medusa,  1650–52,  Amsterdam, Koninklijk Paleis
Fig. 2 Artus Quellinus (1609–1668), Medusa, 1650–52, marble, 70 x 25 cm. Amsterdam, Koninklijk Paleis (artwork in the public domain: photo: Tom Haartsen 2015) [side-by-side viewer]
Gerrit Berckheyde (1638–1698),  View of the Town Hall of Amsterdam, Amersfoort, Bruikleen Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed
Fig. 3 Gerrit Berckheyde (1638–1698), View of the Town Hall of Amsterdam, oil on canvas, 75.5 x 91.5 cm. Amersfoort, Bruikleen Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hans Speeckaert (1535–1575/80,  Allegory of Sculpture, 1582,
Fig. 4 Hans Speeckaert (1535–1575/80, Allegory of Sculpture, 1582, etching (artwork in the public domain; photo: Wikimedia Commons) [side-by-side viewer]
Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734),  Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Med,  ca. 1705–10,  Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum
Fig. 5 Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734), Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Medusa, ca. 1705–10, oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. no. 86.PA.591 (artwork in the public domain; digital image courtesy of Getty Open Content Program) [side-by-side viewer]
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640),  Temple of Janus (sketch for the Joyous Entry of, 1634,  St. Petersburg, State Museum of the Hermitage
Fig. 6 Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Temple of Janus (sketch for the Joyous Entry of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand), 1634, oil on panel, 70 x 65.5 cm. St. Petersburg, State Museum of the Hermitage (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Theodoor van Thulden (1606–1669), after Peter Paul Rubens,  The Temple of Janus, (from Johannes Casper Geva, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Fig. 7 Theodoor van Thulden (1606–1669), after Peter Paul Rubens, The Temple of Janus, etching, 531 _ 454 mm (from Johannes Casper Gevartius, Pompa Introïtus Ferdinandi [Antwerp, 1641]). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-OB-70.270 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Primaticcio (1504–1570), Grotte des Pins, begun ca. 1528, Château de Fontainebleau
Fig. 8 Primaticcio (1504–1570), Grotte des Pins, begun ca. 1528, Château de Fontainebleau (artwork in the public domain; photo: author) [side-by-side viewer]
Primaticcio (1504–1570),  Apartment of the duchesse d’Étampes (detail sh,  1541–44,  Château de Fontainebleau
Fig. 9 Primaticcio (1504–1570), apartment of the duchesse d’Étampes (detail showing caryatids), 1541–44, Château de Fontainebleau (artwork in the public domain; photo: ©Château de Fontainebleau - RMN/Jean-Pierre Lagiewski) [side-by-side viewer]
Attributed to Jacopo Zucchi (1540–1595/6),  Design for a Fountain with Perseus Killing Medus,  ca. 1600,  Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Estampes
Fig. 10 Attributed to Jacopo Zucchi (1540–1595/6), Design for a Fountain with Perseus Killing Medusa and Pegasus, ca. 1600, pen and brown ink, brown wash, 45.7 x 33.4 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Estampes, inv. no. 4553 (recto) (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640),  Study of the Farnese Hercules, London, The Courtauld Gallery
Fig. 11 Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Study of the Farnese Hercules, pen and ink on paper, 15.3 cm x 19.6 cm. London, The Courtauld Gallery, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, inv. no. D.1978.PG.427 (recto) (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Leonaert Bramer (1596–1674),  Perseus,  date unknown, Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Estampes
Fig. 12 Leonaert Bramer (1596–1674), Perseus, date unknown, gray ink and wash on gray paper, 20.9 x 30.5 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Estampes, inv. no. 22528 (recto) (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Attributed to Bertholet Flémalle (1614–1675),  Perseus Brandishing the Head of Medusa,  ca. 1650,  London, National Gallery
Fig. 13 Attributed to Bertholet Flémalle (1614–1675), Perseus Brandishing the Head of Medusa, ca. 1650, oil on canvas, 165 x 243.4 cm. London, National Gallery (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Son of Niobe (Roman copy, possibly after Scopas, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
Fig. 14 Son of Niobe (Roman copy, possibly after Scopas and Praxiteles, formerly in the garden of the Villa Medici in Rome), marble, h: 160 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (artwork in the public domain; photo: Wikipedia Commons) [side-by-side viewer]
Gijsbert van Veen (1562–1628), Allegory Showing the Duke of Parma as Defender of,  1585–92, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Fig. 15 Gijsbert van Veen (1562–1628), Allegory Showing the Duke of Parma as Defender of the Catholic Faith in the Low Countries, 1585–92, engraving. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-OB-79.754 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frederik Boutatts, after unknown artist, Perseus Defeating Phineus by Showing Him the Head ,
Fig. 16 Frederik Boutatts, after unknown artist, Perseus Defeating Phineus by Showing Him the Head of Medusa (from the 1703 edition of Joost van den Vondel, Publius Ovidius Nasoos Herscheppinge vertaelt door Joost van den Vondel, originally published in Amsterdam, 1671) (artwork in the public domain; photo: Wikipedia Commons). [side-by-side viewer]

Footnotes

  1. 1. De jeugd van Constantijn Huygens door hemzelf beschreven, ed. Albert H. Kan (Rotterdam and Antwerp: Donker, 1971), 74–75: “Het is me, alsof ik van zijn vele schilderijen altijd één voor oogen heb. . . . Het stelt het afgehouwen hoofd van Medusa voor, omwonden door slangen, die uit het haar tevoorschijn komen. Daarin heeft hij de aanblik van een wonderschoone vrouw, die nog bekoorlijk is maar toch afgrijzen wekt, doordat de dood juist is ingetreden en ongure slangen om haar slapen hangen, met zulk een onuitsprekelijk overleg gecomponeerd, dat den beschouwer plotseling een schrik bevangt—het is namelijk gewoonlijk door een doek bedekt—maar dat hij toch ondanks het ijselijke van de voorstelling geniet, omdat ze levendig en mooi is.” The autobiography dates from 1629–31. On the relation between Rubens and Huygens, see Lieven Rens, “Rubens en de literatuur van zijn tijd,” Dietsche Warande en Belfort 122 (1977): 328–66; on Huygens, Rubens’s Medusa, and the sublime, see most recently Jürgen Pieters, “De blik van Medusa,” in De tranen der herinnering: Het gesprek met de doden (Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 2005), 130–66; on Rubens’s Medusas, see Walter Prohaska in Peter Paul Rubens 1577–1640, exh. cat. (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1977), 81–83; Peter Sutton in The Age of Rubens, ed. P. Sutton, exh. cat. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1993), 245–47; Marion van der Meulen and Arnout Balis, eds., Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vols. 23/2 and 23/3, Copies after the Antique (London and Philadelphia: Brepols, 1994–95), figs 345, 346, 350, and 351. All translations unless otherwise indicated are by the author.

  2. 2. Longinus, On the Sublime, 1.4, 1.7, and 7.3. All translations are from the Loeb Edition: Longinus on the Sublime. revised by Donald Russell, translated by W. H. Fyfe, (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1995). http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/dlcl.longinus-sublime.1995

  3. 3. Franciscus Junius, The Painting of the Ancients (London: printed by R. Hodgkinsonne, 1638), 290; Junius, De schilder-konst der Oude (Middelburg: Zacharias Roman, 1641), 323–24: “sich aen de selvighe stucken met sulcken diepen verwonderinghe vergaepen, datse als door een verruckte verslaegenheyd schijnen gheslagehen te sie jn.”

  4. 4. Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst (Rotterdam: François van Hoogstraten, 1678), 179: “[D]at is waerlijk groots . . . ’t welk ons t’elens wederom als versch voor d’oogen verschijnt; ’t welk ons zwaer, of liever onmogelijk is uit de zin te stellen; welkers gedachtenisse geduerich, en als onuitwisselijk, in onze herten schijnt ingedrukt.”

  5. 5. Longinus, On the Sublime, 1.4. http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/dlcl.longinus-sublime.1995

  6. 6. Ibid., 15.1–2.

  7. 7. Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 1–8.

  8. 8. Aristotle, De anima, 432a9–10.

  9. 9. Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 248.

  10. 10. “Rather than making one see an illusion, [enargeia] creates the illusion of the act of seeing.” Ruth Webb, “Mémoire et imagination: les limites de l’enargeia dans la théorie rhétorique grecque,” in Dire l’Evidence (philosophie et rhétorique antiques) ed. Colette Lévy and Louis Pernot (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), 248.

  11. 11. The most influential ancient statements about the relation between poetry and the visual arts are by Aristotle (Poetics, 1448a and 1450a); Simonides, for instance as reported by the Auctor ad Herennium, 4.39 (“Poema loquens pictura est, pictura tacitum poema debet esse); Philostratus, Eikones, 1.1 and 2.2.1; and Dio Chrysosotomus, XIIth Olympian Discourse, 12.82, on the relative merits of sculpture and epic poetry. For a historical overview, see Gert Üding et al., eds., Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik (Tübingen: Walter Degruyter, 1992–2000), s.v. “Malerei” and “Paragone.” For Netherlandish artistic theory, see Jochem Becker, “Lucas de Heere,” Simiolus 6 (1972/73): 113–27; Becker, “Domenicus Lampsonius,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 24 (1973): 45–61; Karel van Mander, Den grondt der edel vry schilder-const, ed. Hessel Miedema (Utrecht: Haentjens, Dekker, & Gumbert, 1973), vol. 1, prologue and chapt. 1; Philipp Fehl, “Franciscus Junius and the Defence of the Arts,” Artibus et Historiae 3 (1981): 9–55; Colette Nativel, “La comparaison entre la poésie et la peinture dans le De pictura veterum (I.4) de Franciscus Junius,” Word and Image 4 (1988): 323–30; Philips Angel, “Praise of Painting, translated by Michael Hoyle, with an introduction and commentary by Hessel Miedema,” Simiolus 24 (1996): 227–58; Franciscus Junius, introduction to Gerardus Johannes Vossius, De quatuor artibus popularibus (Amsterdam: Ioannes Blaeu, 1650); Cornelis de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edele vry Schilder-const (Amsterdam: Ian Meyssens, 1661–62), 22, 467–71; and W. Goeree, Inleydingh tot de Practijck der Al-gemeene Schilderkonst (Middelburg: Wilhelmus Goeree, 1670), 22–26.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3780840
    http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/dlcl.aristotle-poetics.1995
    http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3780438
    http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1483099
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02666286.1988.10436251

  12. 12. On ekplexis and the related kataplêxis, which are not very common terms outside rhetoric and poetics, see also Aristotle, Poetics, 1460b25; and Eugenio Refini, “Longinus and Poetic Imagination in Late Renaissance Literary Theory,” in Translations of the Sublime: The Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of the Peri Hupsous in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture, and the Theatre, ed. Caroline A. van Eck, Stijn Bussels, Maarten Delbeke, and Jürgen Pieters. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 45–46.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/dlcl.aristotle-poetics.1995
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004234338_004

  13. 13. Longinus, Peri hypsous, 12.4 and 34.4.

  14. 14. The editio princeps was published by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1508–9, in his famous volume of rhetorical treatises, Aphonii Sophistae Progymnasmata (vol. 1, pp. 545–73). The first Latin edition was made by Pier Vettori: Petri Victorii Commentarii in Librum Demetrii Phalerei de Eloquentia (Florence: Giunti, 1572). This was dedicated by the academician Vettori to Cosimo I of Florence. A partial Latin translation was published in Antwerp by Johannes Sambucus in 1567: Demetrii Phalerei De Epistolis Doctrina (Antwerp: Ex Officio Chrstophori Plantini, 1567). For the early edition and dissemination history, see Bernard Weinberg, “Translations and Commentaries of Demetrius’ On Style to 1600: A Bibliography,” Philological Quarterly 30 (1951): 353–58; but much remains to be done, in particularly on the possible impact of Demetrius’s mixture of the terrible and the comic or the grotesque and its possible impact on Netherlandish art. The best recent editions of Demetrius are the Budé edition by P. Chiron: Du Style (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1993) and by G. Marpurgo-Tagliabue: Demetrio: Dello stile (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1980).

  15. 15. Demetrius, On Style, sect. 283.

  16. 16. Ibid., sect. 258.

  17. 17. Giovanni Lombardo, “Sublime et deinotès dans l’antiquité gréco-latine”: www.cairn.info/article_p.php?ID_ARTICLE=RPHI_034_0403; consulted on April 4, 2015.

  18. 18. Lombardo suggests this but does not quote any sources. The most important are: Hesiod (attr.), The Shield of Heracles, lines 226–37; Pindar, Pythian Ode, 12.12–15, on the Gorgon’s deinos character; on their petrifying agency, see, for example, Apollodorus, Library and Epitome , 11.4.2; Lucian, The Hall, chapt. 19. The latter is also of interest in the context of this essay because Lucan uses a comparison with the petrifying powers of the Gorgons to bolster his argument that images make a far stronger and more lasting impression than words. For the cultural and religious context of the Gorgons, see Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Persée, la mort, l’image,” in L’Univers, les dieux, les hommes (1999; repr., Paris: Seuil, 2007), 133–41; Vernant, “Le Masque de Gorgô,” in La Mort dans les yeux: Figures de l’autre en Grèce ancienne (1985; repr., Paris: Seuil, 2007) 1488–93; Vernant, “Figures du masque en Grèce ancienne,” in Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne, Vernant and Pierre Vidal Naquet (1986; repr., Paris: Seuil, 2007), 1188–1202; Françoise Frontisi-Dutroux, “La Gorgone, paradigme de creation d’images,” in Les Cahiers du Collège Iconique: Communications et Débats 1 (Paris: La Diffusion Française, 1993); English translation in The Medusa Reader, ed. Marjorie Garber and Nancy J. Vickers (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 262–67.

  19. 19. Demetrius, On Style, sect. 283. He refers to Odyssey, 9.369–70.

  20. 20. Everard Meyster, Hemelsch Land-spel of Goden Kout. . . (Amsterdam: Gedruckt voor de Lief-hebbers, 1655), 78: “. . . het helsch gedrocht/Erynnis, en Medus,’ ons levend hadden willen/Versccheuren en vertreen; wy staen schier noch en trillen,/Als wy’r gedenken aen, my dunkt, sy volgen noch.”

  21. 21. Pieter Rixtel, “Op het Stadthuys van Amsterdam, Geschildert door den vermaerden Schilder Gerrit Berkheyden van Haerlem,” in Mengel-Rymen (Haarlem: Vincent Casteleyn, 1669), 42: “Wanneer de Zon myn ‘t Voorhooft streelt,/Door ‘t Gout, en Marm’re Beelden speelt,/Kan geen nieusgierige in zyn Oogen,/De glans van ’t witte Albast gedoogen,/Maer staet, de Steen aen-ziende, als een/Die selfs verandert is in Steen.”

  22. 22. The literature on both myths and their artistic representations is vast. On Pygmalion, see most recently, Kenneth Gross, The Dream of the Moving Statue (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992); and Victor Stoichita: The Pygmalion Effect: From Ovid to Hitchcock, trans. Andrew Anderson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); on Medusa, see the exhibition catalogues: Werner Hofmann, ed., Zauber der Medusa: Europäische Manierismen (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1987); Valentina Conticelli, ed., Medusa, Il mito, l’antico e i Medici (Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi/Electa, 2008); Caterina Caneva, ed., La Medusa del Caravaggio restaurata (Rome: Musei Capitolini/Electa, 2002); and Elena Bianca di Gioia,ed., La Medusa di Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Studi e restauri (Rome: Musei Capitolini/Electa, 2007).

  23. 23. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.252–58. http://etext.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/trans/Ovhome.htm – askline (translation Anthony S. Kline); consulted on January 24, 2012:

    . . . ars adeo latet arte sua. Miratur et haurit

    pectore Pygmalion simulati corporis ignes.

    Saepe manus operi temptantes admovet,

    an sit corpus, an illud ebur. Nec adhuc ebur esse fatetur.

    Oscula dat redditque putat loquiturque tenetque,

    et credit tactis digitos insidere membris

    et metuit, pressos veniat ne livor in artus.”

  24. 24. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.275–76.

  25. 25. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 5.1–236, translated by Rolfe Humhries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1955), in particular lines 183: in hoc haesit signum de marmore gestu; 197: Incursus erat: tenuit vestigia tellus/inmotusque silex armataque mansit imago; 205: Dum stupet Astyages naturam traxit eandem/marmoreoque manet vultus mirantis in ore; and 211–214: Simulacra videt diversa figuris/agnoscitque suos et nomine quemque vocatum/poscit opem, credensque parum sibi proxima tangit/corpora : marmor erant [italics added].

  26. 26. Frontisi-Ducroux: “La Gorgone, paradigme de creation d’images.” See also the fundamental study by Jean-Pierre Vernant: La mort dans les yeux, in Jean-Pierre Vernant, Oeuvres. Religions. Rationalités. Politique (1985; repr., Paris: Seuil, 2007), 2:1477–1525.

  27. 27. Caroline A. van Eck, “Animation and Petrifaction in Rubens’s Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi,” in Art, Music and Spectacle in the Age of Rubens: The Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi, ed. Anna Knaap and Michael Putnam (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 143–67.

  28. 28. Sebastiano Serlio, Livre Extraordinaire de architecture/Extraordinario Libro di Architettura (Lyons: Guillaume Roville, 1558), pls. XX and XXIX (of the rustic series).

  29. 29. Karel van Mander, Uytleggingh op den Metamorphosis Pub. Ovidii Nasonis . . . (Amsterdam: Cornelis Lodewijcksz. van der Plasse, 1616), fol. 35; Joost van den Vondel, Publius Ovidius Nasoos Herscheppinge vertaelt door Joost van den Vondel (Amsterdam: Van Wees, 1671). In this edition the illustrations are rough copies of the images by Antonio Tempesta for the translation by Pieter de Iode published in Antwerp in 1606. On Dutch editions of Ovid and their illustrations, see M. D. Henkel, “Nederlandsche Ovidius-Illustraties van de 15e tot de 18e Eeuw,” Oud-Holland 39 (1921): 149–182; see also Eric Jan Sluijter, De Heydensche Fabulen in de Schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2009) for the general context of Dutch representations of Ovid; and the very useful website Ovid Illustrated: The Reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Image and Text, curated by Daniel Kinsley with Elizabeth Styron(http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/ovidillust.html).
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187501721X00206

  30. 30. For this anecdote, see Maarten Delbeke, “Elevated Twins and the Vicious Sublime: Gianlorenzo Bernini and Louis XIV,” in Translations of the Sublime, ed. Caroline A. van Eck et al. (see note 12 above ), 117–38.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004234338_008

  31. 31. F. Frontisi-Ducroux, “Les limites de l’anthropomorphisme: Hermès et Dionysos,” in Corps des Dieux, ed. Charles Malamoud and Jean-Pierre Vernant (Paris: Folio, 1986), 259–87. On the origins of herms, see also Hetty Goldman, “The Origins of the Greek Herm,” American Journal of Archaeology 46 (1942): 57–68, and Anna Donohue, Xoana and the Origins of Greek Sculpture (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 217–8.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/499105

  32. 32. Aristotle, Poetics, 4.2.1448b and Rhetoric 1.2.9.137b. http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/dlcl.aristotle-poetics.1995

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DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2016.8.2.3
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Caroline van Eck, "The Petrifying Gaze of Medusa: Ambivalence, Explexis, and the Sublime," Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 8:2 (Summer 2016) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2016.8.2.3