Medusa, Monstrous Beauty, and Neuroaesthetics

Michelle Zerba

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2024

Abstract

To speak of monstrous beauty is to fuse what is ordinarily understood as irreconcilable. Yet from ancient times, we encounter figures who exemplify what the phrase might mean: hybrid creatures, theriomorphic beings, transmogrified beasts bearing the marks of a confounded natural order. Many of these monstrous beauties are female composites, bizarre, malevolent, and violent, and their sexuality is androgynously gendered. To understand the continuing provocation of such monstrous beauties, this chapter explores images of the Medusa from antiquity and the early modern period, notably, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s famous paintings of 1596 and 1597, through insights emerging from the burgeoning new field of neuroaesthetics.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Beauty and Monstrosity in Art and Culture

First Page

213

Last Page

222

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