The Medusa Rondanini

*"[T]he mere knowledge that such a work could be created and still exists in the world makes me feel twice the person I was ... If I can get hold of a good cast of this Medusa, I shall bring it back with me..."*—Goethe, *Italian Journey*
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This is my laser scan of the [Skulpturhalle Basel's](http://www.skulpturhalle.ch/) plaster cast of the Munich Glyptothek's [Medusa Rondanini](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa_Rondanini), possibly a fifth-century BC work, and the [oldest-known](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/504713?uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104938253653) "beautiful gorgoneion" sculpture. The design may have been copied from a gilded bronze aegis that once hung in the Acropolis, where it would have been meant to ward off evil and bad luck.

A revision of the [grotesque](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gorgona_pushkin_edited.jpg), disk-shaped death masks of older gorgoneia, the Medusa Rondanini appears to borrow the idealized likeness of [