LUCA GIORDANO
(Naples, 1634 – 1705)

Perseus Turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone

Oil on canvas
61 x 89 inches (155 x 227.7 cm)

Provenance:

With Heim Gallery, London, by 1966

Sotheby’s, London, 10 July 1974, lot 37; where acquired by a private collector and by whom gifted on 24 April 2018 to the present owner.

Exhibited:

“Italian Paintings and Sculptures,” London, Heim Galley, 1966, no. 12.

Birmingham, Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, on long-term loan, 1968–1973.

South Hadley, MA, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, on long-term loan, 1984–2020.

“Acquisition in Focus: Luca Giordano,” London, The National Gallery, June 1985.

Literature:

Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, 1966, vol. 1, pp. 98, 118-119, 333, and vol. 3, fig. 235.

Michael Helston, Luca Giordano, Perseus Turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone, London, 1985, p. 9, fig. 7.

Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: L’Opera Completa, Naples, 1992, vol. 1, p. 297, cat. no. A275, and vol. 2, p. 619, fig. 387.

Gabriele Finaldi in Luca Giordano: 1634–1705, exh. cat., Naples, 2001, p. 212, under cat. no. 71.

This expansive canvas captures the climactic moment of the wedding feast of Perseus and Andromeda, which was disrupted by the vengeful Phineas, the former suitor of the bride, and his entourage. Far outnumbered by these unwelcome guests, Perseus held aloft the severed head of Medusa—the gorgon he had recently slain—whose hideous appearance would turn anyone who looked upon her to stone. While Perseus averted his gaze, Phineus and his followers looked upon Medusa’s severed head and suffered the consequences.

Giordano has brilliantly depicted the intruders turning into stone. Playing off of the dark ambience and with a masterful use of light and shadow, the artist has captured the figures in various stages of petrification, as the colors and flesh tones disappear and their skin turns to pallid grey. While the present work shares some compositional elements and figural poses with Giordano’s monumental treatment of the subject now in the National Gallery, London (Fig. 1), this work was conceived independently and presents a rethinking of this frenetic scene, one of high drama that probes the nature of visual experience.