Let it be pass on
No good can come of it -- it is not well
To meet it--it is an enchanted phantom,
A lifeless idol; with its numbing look,
It freezes up the blood of man; and they
Who meet its ghastly stare are turned to stone,
Like those who saw Medusa.
Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust.

The Medusa Rondanini, a reconstruction and my own (not original) colored version. A copy with missing wings and snakes parts now at the Munich Glyptothek. Copy of an original of about 440 BC? 1826 King Ludwig presents a copy of the Rondanini Medusa to Goethe

See

Medusa Rondanini , Glyptothek Munich

Compare the Medusa Rondanini with my colored version of the archaic Gorgo Medusa from the Corfu Artemis Temple (around 580 BC). See: The Artemis Temple and Medusa in Corfu

Sigmund Freund in "Medusa's Head" provides a psychological explanation of the terror of Medusa, as a fear of castration linked to the sight of the female genitals surrounded by hair in which the spectator becomes "stiff with terror,"...

http://www.stoa.org/metis/cgi-bin/qtvr?site=didyma Vrtual Tour Didyma and the Medusa (Quicktime Movie)

Another version of the Medusa. The beheading of the Medusa probably this archaic relief (550-540 BC) is the most brutal piece of Greek Art . Perseus shows no signs of emotions, probably he avoids to see Medusa face to face because he knows the danger. Part of a metope of the so called Greek Temple C at Selinus (Selinunte), Sicily in Italy, Museo Archeologico, Palermo. Perseus gives the head of Medusa to Athena and she uses it as a weapon. The winged Pegasus horse in the hands of Medusa as it was produced from her blood.