The Death of Medusa (a fragment)

This is a fragment of an unfinished canvas representing the death of the gorgon Medusa. One of a series of ten designs illustrating the story of Perseus's search for Medusa and his rescue of Andromeda, the series was commissioned in 1875 by the young Tory politician Arthur Balfour, and was conceived as a frieze running round the music room at his London house, 4 Carlton Gardens. Burne-Jones originally planned to execute some of the designs as oil paintings and others as reliefs in gilt gesso on oak panels, but when the first of these panels (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff) was exhibited in 1878 it met with a hostile reception and he decided to treat all the designs as paintings. Full-scale cartoons in gouache are in the Southampton Art Gallery, and the final oil paintings, some of them unfinished, are in the Staatsgalerie at Stuttgart.

In The Death of Medusa, which was conceived as a painting from the outset, Perseus has just cut off the gorgon's head while her two sisters, greatly distressed, circle wildly. The present fragment comes from an early version of the composition and shows the figure of the dying Medusa. The design was later altered radically, and in the oil cartoon the figure of Medusa is clothed. A preparatory study for the subject as it was originally conceived is illustrated here (fig. 1). Another fragment, A Gorgon (fig 2.), from the same canvas, was sold in these rooms on 11 July 2013, lot 47 (£217,875).