Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Medusa

This 1705 Perseus Confronting Phineus at the Getty Museum depicts the dramatic banquet scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses in which Perseus, accused of stealing his promised bride Andromeda, turns his enemies to stone by displaying Medusa's severed head. The subject offered Baroque painters one of mythology's most dramatic moments of transformation—guests frozen mid-action, the hero commanding silence with the terrible trophy. Ricci renders the chaos of reaction with characteristic energy, figures recoiling or shielding their eyes in varied poses that demonstrate his command of figural invention. The Getty Museum's holding documents significant Italian Baroque representation in California collections assembled from European dispersals in the twentieth century.

The petrification scene creates dramatic contrasts between living and stone figures, Ricci's warm palette and dramatic lighting organizing the chaotic banquet into a readable narrative of supernatural power.