Head of Medusa

The Head of Medusa (c. 1617-18) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is one of the most remarkable examples of artistic collaboration in Rubens's career and one of the most viscerally disturbing paintings in Baroque art. Rubens executed the severed head of the Gorgon — her face still beautiful in death, her gaze still lethal — while his friend and collaborator Frans Snyders painted the swarming snakes, insects, and reptiles that surround the decapitated head. Such collaborations between specialists in different genres were a characteristic feature of the Antwerp artistic community, where painters of figures, landscapes, animals, and flowers routinely combined their skills in works that exceeded any single painter's range. The painting's fascination lies in its combination of classical beauty and extreme horror: Medusa's face retains the allure that attracted Perseus while her severed condition and the teeming life of the creatures around her create an experience of simultaneous attraction and revulsion that perfectly expresses the Baroque's expanded emotional ambition.

The painting combines the realistic rendering of the dead Medusa's face with meticulously detailed snakes and insects. The dark background intensifies the spotlight effect on the pallid head, while the creatures create a frame of writhing, organic horror.

This collaboration between Rubens (the head) and likely Frans Snyders (the serpents and creatures) has been in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The painting on canvas has been conserved multiple times. The macabre subject has ensured it was always a prominent display piece. The paint surface is in good condition.