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Museum of Classical Archaeology Databases

Ludovisi Medusa

Sometimes formerly known as Sleeping Fury.

This deep relief shows a wild-haired woman in profile with her eyes closed. But is the woman asleep or dead? There was a theory that it is a fragment of a dead giant from the Great Altar of Zeus at Pergamon. Geological analysis of the marble has now shown this to be impossible

Number: 
394
Material: 
Marble
Location of Original: 

Rome, National Museum, Terme, 153

Size: 
0.54m
Accession: 

Donation by S. Colvin May 28 1881 to the Fitzwilliam Museum; transferred to the Museum in 1884

References: 

Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 363 (n.13)
Lawrence: Later Greek Sculpture (1927), 21, pl. 35
Paribeni: Guide of the National Museum (Terme), Rome (1932), 108
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 103, no.550
Reporter: 19 June 1885, 894, no.488
Ridgway, in Kopcke & Moore (eds.): Studies in Classical Art and Archaeology (1979), 153
Ridgway & Herz: American Journal of Archaeology, vol.89, no.3 (July 1985), 519

Date: 
Roman. Original: C2 BCE
Provenance: 

From the Ludovisi Collection

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