File:Italy, Venice, mid-16th century - Doorknocker with Gorgon Head - 1972.1 - Cleveland Museum of Art.tif
Original file (4,396 × 5,078 pixels, file size: 63.89 MB, MIME type: image/tiff)
Captions
Summary
[edit]Doorknocker with Gorgon Head ( ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Title |
Doorknocker with Gorgon Head |
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Object type |
sculpture object_type QS:P31,Q860861 |
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Description |
Venice was a center for numerous bronze founders who made elaborate doorknockers for palace doors throughout the city. Although utilitarian, these objects were meant to impress as works of art in their own right. The presence of snakes that coil from this fearsome head suggest that this is Medusa, one of the three demon sisters in Greek mythology known as the Gorgons. According to some legends, Medusa was an attractive woman who, after having an affair with the god Poseidon in Athena's temple, was transformed by the goddess into a serpent-haired beast. Her visage was so terrifying that anyone who looked at it was turned to stone. The hero Perseus was ordered to decapitate Medusa, and Athena subsequently placed the monstrous head in the center of her shield. The use of the Gorgon's head as an ancient motif and protective symbol to avert evil developed from this fabled act. Such literary and iconographic traditions were known to Renaissance artists, and the presence of a Gorgon head on a doorknocker almost certainly evokes its guarding function for a Venetian home. |
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Date | mid 1500s | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Medium | Bronze | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Dimensions | Overall: 25.4 x 19.7 x 6.9 cm (10 x 7 3/4 x 2 11/16 in.) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Collection |
institution QS:P195,Q657415 |
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Current location |
European Painting and Sculpture |
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Accession number |
1972.1 |
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Place of creation | Italy, Venice, mid-16th century | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Credit line | Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Source/Photographer | https://clevelandart.org/art/1972.1 |
Licensing
[edit]This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. | |
The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.enCC0Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedicationfalsefalse |
This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project with the Cleveland Museum of Art. See the Open Access at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
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Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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current | 00:06, 6 April 2019 | 4,396 × 5,078 (63.89 MB) | Madreiling (talk | contribs) | pattypan 18.02 |
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Camera manufacturer | Sinar AG |
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Camera model | Sinarback eVolution 75, Sinar p3 / f3 |
Author | Gary Kirchenbauer |
Width | 4,396 px |
Height | 5,078 px |
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Compression scheme | Uncompressed |
Pixel composition | RGB |
Image data location | 23,380 |
Orientation | Normal |
Number of components | 3 |
Number of rows per strip | 5,078 |
Bytes per compressed strip | 66,968,664 |
Horizontal resolution | 400 dpi |
Vertical resolution | 400 dpi |
Data arrangement | chunky format |
Software used | Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh |
File change date and time | 10:30, 3 February 2009 |
Color space | Uncalibrated |