My first encounter with Medusa was Caravaggio’s painted shield at the Uffizi Gallery—a haunting, fearful image.

Looking closely, one might even see Caravaggio's own face in her expression.

Medusa is often shown as a monster with snakes for hair, whose gaze turns people to stone. But before that, she was a gentle and beautiful woman.

In Ovid's telling, she served as a priestess of Athena in the Parthenon. Poseidon saw her there and assaulted her inside the temple.

Enraged by the desecration—yet unwilling to punish her uncle Poseidon—Athena cursed Medusa, turning her into the snake-haired Gorgon.

Athena could have simply erased Medusa. Instead, she allowed the hero Perseus to behead her, then placed Medusa’s head on her own shield as a weapon.

My favorite portrait is Rossetti’s—which shows her not as a monster, but as a thoughtful woman with soft hair and quiet eyes. A reminder of who she was before the curse.

One can’t help but wonder: shouldn’t Poseidon have been the one punished?

Preti's original article

Photo by Preti