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Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, 
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 14:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 112 (M. 1796–97); 25 (F. 1798); 475 (M. 1804);
KM 308.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is made from a turtle shell. The
ground is white. There are cracks in the shell and several cracks,
losses and abrasions in the paint layer. The paint layer is very dark;
probably the paint itself has darkened. The varnish is yellowed. The
inside of the shell is inscribed with the name Raphael.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sander 1872–76, III, p. 138, no. 475 (as Raphael).

In the Louvre there is quite a distinct drawing of
the head of Medusa attributed to Calandrucci,
acquired in 1972 from the art dealer Paul Prouté.¹
It is found on the verso of a sheet with a drawing
of Moses and the Spies Returning from Canaan on
the recto. There is no question that
this drawing of the head of Medusa is directly
related to the present Nationalmuseum painting,
in all probability as a preparatory study.² Comparing
the drawing and the painting, we can see
that the vipers curl and twirl in almost exactly the
same positions: for example, the two vipers’ heads
that face each other above Medusa’s head, the one
that turns to the left below these, and the one
that turns in towards the chin from the left. All
these correspond directly between drawing and
painting.

The Louvre sheet has obviously been cut along
the right-hand side. This is especially evident
from a comparison with the painting: clearly,
Calandrucci originally developed a depiction of
curling vipers just as detailed on the right as on
the left. This is shown in particular by a study
of what little remains of those snakes on the
Louvre sheet. We can see for example how these
fragments, a viper’s jaws turned towards the chin
from the right and a curve representing a viper
turning from the head to the right, exactly correspond
with the depiction of the snakes to the
right of the head in the painting.

The inventory of Calandrucci’s collection of
other masters’ drawings and the extensive body
of his own preserved drawings, the greater part
of which are today in the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf
and the Louvre respectively, shows that
he was inspired by a wide range of artists.³ In
the Düsseldorf collection there are for example
careful studies of different famous artworks in
Florence, including Michelangelo’s sculptures for the 
Medici Chapel.⁴ During his stay at Florence,
Calandrucci must also have had the opportunity
to see Caravaggio’s famous shield with the head
of Medusa – commissioned by Cardinal Francesco
Maria Del Monte (1549–1627) as a gift for the
Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici (1549–
1609) in 1601 – since it must undoubtedly have
influenced the Louvre drawing and consequently
the Nationalmuseum painting. Calandrucci’s
depiction of the severed head of Medusa is most
clearly influenced by Caravaggio’s example in
the way the stark look of horror and anguish is
expressed in her face; in particular, the way the
open mouth is frozen in a scream and the gaze
is similarly fixed and frozen. The general colour
scheme, too, is very close to Caravaggio’s.⁵

The present work is painted on a curved convex
turtle shell, presumably to resemble a parade
shield of the same sort as the one by Caravaggio.
However, there are no discernible traces of hooks
where a handle or support for the arm could have
been fastened if it had been used as a shield of
this kind. There are only two holes along the top
edge, where one would have threaded the string
used to hang it on the wall. Analogously to Caravaggio’s
work, Calandrucci quite deftly handles
the convex surface of the shield, creating an illusionistic
impression of it mirroring a flat surface.⁶
Perhaps a desire to flaunt this particular skill was
one of his reasons for painting the shell – to show
the sprezzatura of his craftsmanship.⁷

As much as Calandrucci’s painting is indebted
to the Caravaggio shield, it is also a work more
typical of an earlier tradition than that, even
though it was probably painted about a hundred
years after Caravaggio’s. In fact, the way the brow
is heavily furrowed and the forehead and the broad 
nose are wrinkled closely resembles the
Medusa head found on the sculpture of Minerva
by Jacopo Sansovino (1486–1570) at the Loggetta
del Campanile of the San Marco cathedral in
Venice.⁸ 

The way the eyes slopes towards the
sides, giving an expression of sorrow and distress
as well as horror, is also very close to the Sansovino
sculpture. This characteristic is likewise found
in Bernini’s famous bust in the Musei Capitolini,
Rome, but is lacking in Caravaggio’s version.⁹
Comparing drawing and painting, we can see
how Calandrucci seems to have reasoned, hesitant
as to how far he should adhere to the earlier,
less bloody, tradition. In the drawing, the fact
that the head of Medusa has been decapitated is
clearer, as the artist tentatively shows drops of
blood emanating from her neck. In the finished
painting however, Calandrucci returns to the
more traditional depiction, where these drops of
blood seem instead to turn into a symmetrical
knot of the tail ends of two of the snakes, in the
manner of Sansovino’s sculpture. Perhaps this
alteration was a result of adapting the image to
the convex surface. Calandrucci’s painting of the
subject retains this symmetrical element from
Sansovino’s depiction, while he replaces the wild
and tangled hair with the disorder of the curling
and intertwining vipers, influenced by Caravaggio
and Bernini. In this way, he fuses the influences
from the earlier tradition with the 17th-century
elements.

The present painting was attributed to Raphael
in Fredenheim’s catalogue, and on the retained
paper label on the verso it is still attributed to
that artist by Corvi and Tofanelli.¹⁰ Even in the
document sent to Fredenheim, in which Martelli
more closely describes a few of the paintings in
his collection, he singles out this one for special
praise, attributing it to Raphael and describing its
function as a 16th-century parade shield.¹¹ This
peculiarly ambitious attribution is probably related
to Vasari’s story of the shield which Leonardo
supposedly painted as a young man. Vasari describes
how Leonardo painted two versions of the
subject: a Medusa shield and an “Animaliccio”,
an amalgam of crawling and slithering creatures
strongly resembling a straightforward Medusa
depiction.¹² In the Uffizi there is a painting which
as late as the 19th century was attributed to Leonardo,
and which can perhaps be equated with this
“Animaliccio”. The painting in question is today
attributed to an unknown Flemish painter, 17th
century, and is very similar to a famous version of
the subject by Rubens.¹³ Perhaps this reference
to Leonardo’s shield led Martelli to attribute the
painting to the artist among Leonardo’s peers who
was held in highest esteem in the 18th century and
who, except for Michelangelo, was perhaps closest
to him in artistic renown. Martelli could also
have been influenced here by his knowledge of the
prominent use of parade shields in Raphael’s
day.

Upon arrival in Sweden, Calandrucci’s painting
was probably viewed as singular curio and, like a
great many of the Martelli paintings, was deposited
in the royal palaces. With its pseudo-martial
character, it was decided in the 1820s that the
shell should be placed in the newly furnished
“Geatish Room” (Götiska rummet) at the Royal
Palace, Stockholm.¹⁴ This room reflected the
new nationalist tastes of Sweden at the time,
when considerable interest in the earliest history
of Sweden and the Nordic states was emerging.
In particular, the decorations were supposed to
reflect the country’s martial history, as well as
the martial background of the new king Karl
XIV Johan, and objects such as this shield would
therefore have been considered suitable for display
here.¹⁵ Catastrophically though, it was hung
by one of the windows and was consequently
damaged by exposure to direct sunlight, resulting
in heavy paint losses. The existence of the Louvre
drawing, however, permits a reconstruction of the
painting, just as the better preserved right-hand
part of the painting indicates what the missing
right-hand portion of the drawing would in all
likelihood have looked like.
DP

1 The Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, inv. no.
RF35519, verso and recto.
2 In fact the recto of this sheet does directly correspond to a
painting in the collection of the Cassa dei Depositi e
Prestiti, Rome, with an old attribution to Pier Francesco
Mola. Richard Cocke rejected the attribution to Mola,
instead describing the picture as a studio work painted
after Venetian- and Poussin-influenced drawings by Mola;
drawings produced for projects left unfinished at the time
of his death. However, Calandrucci’s drawing is a freer
work while at the same time corresponding much closer to
the painting in question than Mola’s drawings. There is
even a hint of the Poussin-derived landscape of the painting
in Calandrucci’s drawing, which is completely lacking in
Mola’s drawings. While the central group of figures seems
quite clearly defined, there have been several changes to the
other groups of figures, comparing Calandrucci’s drawing
and painting. In all likelihood, Calandrucci painted the
picture in question rather than a student or assistant of
Mola. Taking into account the fact that Calandrucci was a
collector of master drawings, there is a possibility that he
was influenced by one or more of Mola’s unfinished designs.
Cocke 1969.
3 Desmas 2001, pp. 79–121; Graf 1986.
4 Desmas 2001, pp. 79–121; Graf 1986, vol 1, p. 186, cat. no.
973; vol. 2, p. 458, pl. 1083.
5 Gregori and Marini 2012. As excellently argued in this
book, the Medici shield is a close second variant of what is
now considered the first Caravaggio Medusa; the Murtola
shield.
6 Gregori and Marini 2012, pp. 120–147.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., p. 132, fig. 17.
9 Ibid., p. 132, fig. 18.
10 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet
de Martelli (à Rome).
11 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1. Appendix 1.
12 Bellosi and Rossi 1986.
13 The Uffizi, inv. no. P1472.
14 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1.
15 Ibid. [END]

Foto: Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum 2010

Medusa-huvud