Romano Stefanelli - Medusa

According to myth, Medusa was one of the three Gorgons, the only mortal, and lived with her sisters in a cave in the Garden of the Hesperides, near the realm of the underworld. She was also the most beautiful of the three and made Poseidon, god of the sea, fall in love with her. He met her in a small temple dedicated to Athena. Athena, realizing the grave affront, sought revenge by transforming Medusa, a beautiful woman, into a monstrous creature, a bringer of death. Medusa was transformed into a monster with a hideous mask: her mouth was armed with teeth as long as boar's tusks; her hair, once soft and long, became a tangle of venomous snakes; her bronze hands and feet had long, sharp lion's claws.

In this work, depicting the monster Medusa, while employing figurative language and remaining within the context of a harmonious and classical composition, Romano Stefanelli does not shy away from adopting anti-naturalistic overtones. We can see how the subject's physiognomy and plasticity hark back to a classical conception of the human figure. But Stefanelli distorts reality, deforming it to make it more dynamic and expressive. First, Medusa's face is elongated oval, her eyes are oversized, and her expression is unnaturally fixed. Furthermore, the statue's modeling is highly complex and demonstrates a taste for material manipulation and sculptural expressionism that is exquisitely contemporary.

Romano Stefanelli was a Florentine painter and sculptor, born in 1931 and passed away in 2016. He was a disciple of Pietro Annigoni, from whom he learned the great realist and naturalist pictorial tradition, devoting himself primarily to portraits and landscapes. From this figurative approach, his research developed toward a deeper lyricism in representation. He exhibited his works in major Italian cities and abroad since 1968, the year of his debut at the Levi Gallery in Milan. He was also deeply involved in sacred art. Among his most important frescoes are the choir ceiling of the Abbey of Montecassino, the wall cycles of the churches of Santa Maria Assunta in Quarrata and Santa Maria in Massarella, and individual works in the churches of San Michele Arcangelo in Ponte Buggianese and Santa Maria in Torri.

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