Medusa's Gaze
The Extraordinary Journey of the Tazza Farnese
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- $49.99
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- $49.99
Publisher Description
The Tazza Farnese is one of the most admired objects from classical antiquity. A libation bowl carved from banded agate, it features Medusa's head on its outside and, inside, an assembly of Egyptian gods. For more than two millennia, these radiant figures have mesmerized emperors and artists, popes and thieves, merchants and museum goers.
In this, the first book-length account of this renowned masterpiece, Marina Belozerskaya traces its fascinating journey through history. That it has survived at all is a miracle. The Tazza's origins date back to Ptolemaic Egypt where it likely enhanced the power and prestige of Cleopatra. After her defeat by Emperor Augustus, the bowl began an amazing itinerary along many flashpoints in world history. It likely traveled from Rome to Constantinople. After that city's sack by crusaders in 1204, it returned west to inspire the classical revival at the court of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II at Palermo. The Tazza next graced Tamerlane's court at Samarqand, before becoming an obsession of Renaissance popes and princes. It witnessed the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the turbulent aftermath of the French Revolution, and the birth of the modern Italian state. Throughout its journey, the Tazza aroused the lust of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Mongol rulers, consoled a heart-broken duchess, inspired artists including Botticelli and Raphael, tempted spies and thieves, and drew the ire of a deranged museum guard who nearly destroyed it. More than a biography of the world's most cherished bowl, Medusa's Gaze is a vivid and delightful voyage through history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Renaissance art historian Belozerskaya (To Wake the Dead: A Renaissance Merchant and the Birth of Archaeology) offers the fanciful biography of one object, a "sardonyx cameo bowl" nicknamed the Tazza, which was carved, possibly in Alexandria, in the first century B.C. This imaginative narrative is an epic romp through history using the Tazza as connective tissue between empires and collectors over a 2,000-year span. Belozerskaya weaves threads of history into a wide net of possibility cast over Cleopatra, Charlemagne, the Mongol leader Timur, and Lorenzo di Medici, among others, until the object was nearly destroyed by an angry museum guard in the early 20th century. More of a cultural history than an art historical analysis (and more fun to read), the book demonstrates the Christianization of Europe and the West through the reinterpretation of the Tazza's iconography. The classical pagan deities that decorate the bowl lost their efficacy amid the rise of Christianity, making the object "just another beautiful artifact" that was perhaps reused as a Eucharistic chalice. Although the work cites both ancient texts and modern research throughout, it is admittedly speculative in parts, and may be more appropriate for general readers than scholars.
