We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
The Griffin's Gaze and the Mask of Medusa: Self-Referential Motifs in Andrea Mantegna's Trial of St James.
- Authors
Hauser, Andreas
- Abstract
In Mantegna’s Trial of St James, two figures catch our eye: a Roman officer and a child dressed up as a soldier. These characters, who are ignoring the main action of the scene, can be understood as the agents of a meta-discourse. With his eyes gleaming from a face in shadows, the child looks pensively into the distance. The fierce mask on his shield, which faces the viewer, peers towards the officer on the left, who himself is gazing down at the mask adorning the clasp on his cape. The metaphors of the petrifying stare of Medusa, the prophetic vision of the seer, and the penetrating eyes of the lion are combined by Mantegna with typological theology and with the motif of the body as the prison of the soul. Such an interpretation of this Medusan iconography, it is argued, reveals an iconoclastic conception of the mission of art.
- Subjects
MANTEGNA, Andrea, 1431-1506; ITALIAN mural painting &; decoration; 15TH century Italian painting; MEDUSA (Greek mythology); GAZE in art; JAMES, the Greater, Saint
- Publication
Art History, 2014, Vol 37, Issue 2, p334
- ISSN
0141-6790
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-8365.12078