Ludovisi Medusa
Sometimes formerly known as Sleeping Fury.
This deep relief shows a wild-haired woman in profile with her eyes closed. But is the woman asleep or dead? There was a theory that it is a fragment of a dead giant from the Great Altar of Zeus at Pergamon. Geological analysis of the marble has now shown this to be impossible
Rome, National Museum, Terme, 153
Donation by S. Colvin May 28 1881 to the Fitzwilliam Museum; transferred to the Museum in 1884
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 363 (n.13)
Lawrence: Later Greek Sculpture (1927), 21, pl. 35
Paribeni: Guide of the National Museum (Terme), Rome (1932), 108
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 103, no.550
Reporter: 19 June 1885, 894, no.488
Ridgway, in Kopcke & Moore (eds.): Studies in Classical Art and Archaeology (1979), 153
Ridgway & Herz: American Journal of Archaeology, vol.89, no.3 (July 1985), 519
From the Ludovisi Collection