The Gorgon Plaque at Syracuse

Dr. Bernabò-brea has kindly given me a new photograph of this monument. It shows the red paint at the outer corner of the gorgon's eye, which makes her eye look bigger and more sinister. It is not, however, a leer such as many early gorgons wear: the pupil is still in the middle of the eye. A lesion in this region of the eye may be due to strain. Our artist is depicting a gorgon under pressure. We must think away two round, dark shadows behind the top of the plaque: the real top is level with the upper end of the gorgon's ears. Dr. Bernabò-Brea was good enough to discuss the plaque with me, and he allowed me to study it outside its glass case. Here are a few observations:1. What Should Not Be There—the bud-like mark above the nose.The new photographs show that there is no evidence for it in the original. Payne omits it from his drawing and thereby makes the picture stronger and more archaic. No other full-length gorgon seems to have a ‘bud’. Many Corinthian gorgoneia have ‘buds’, the earliest is on the Timonidas vase in Middle Corinthian times. This difference in treatment may be due to the feeling that a gorgon was a living creature, while a gorgoneion was more like a space to be filled. The ‘bud’ has come to our gorgon from a gorgoneion found in Gela, probably of a later date and from a non-Corinthian colony. The same fate of unsponsored restoration overtook a gorgon on a gravestone in Athens, but, as far as my memory serves, the restoration has since been removed.