Perseus with the Head of Medusa
 Smarthistory – Cellini's Perseus
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Perseus with the Head of Medusa is a bronze sculpture made by Benvenuto Cellini in 1545. The sculpture stands upon on a square base with bronze relief panels depicting the story of Perseus and Andromeda, similar to a predella on an altarpiece. It is located in the Loggia dei Lanzi of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy. The second Florentine duke, Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, commissioned the work with specific political connections to the other sculptural works in the piazza. When the piece was revealed to the public on 27 April 1554, Michelangelo’s David, Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus, and Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes were already erected in the piazza.
The subject matter of the work is the mythological story of Perseus beheading Medusa, a hideous woman-faced Gorgon whose hair was turned to snakes and anyone that looked at her was turned to stone. Perseus stands naked except for a sash and winged sandals, triumphant on top of the body of Medusa with her snakey head in his raised hand. The body of Medusa spews blood from her severed neck. The bronze sculpture and Medusa’s head turns men to stone and is appropriately surrounded by three huge marble statues of men: Hercules, David and later Neptune. Cellini breathed new life into the piazza visitor through his new use of bronze in Perseus and the head of Medusa and the motifs he used to respond to the previous sculpture in the piazza. If one examines the sculpture from the back, you can see the self-image of the sculptor Cellini on the backside of Perseus' helmet.
The sculpture is thought to be the first statue since the classical age where the base included a figurative sculpture forming an integral part of the work.
Cellini was the first to integrate narrative relief into the sculpture of the piazza. As the Perseus was installed in the Loggia, it dominated the dimensions of later pedestals of other sculptural works within the Loggia, like Giambologna’s The Rape of the Sabine. Perseus added to the cast of Olympian gods protecting the Medici. Weil-Garris also focuses on the pedestal beneath the sculpture in the round. However, it may not have been Cellini’s original intent, as the relief was still being worked on and installed when the bronze sculpture above had already been revealed. The Medici still dominated the theme of the pedestal as Perseus in the pedestal acts as an allegory to Duke Francesco Medici.
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