Medusa & 149 Medusa Asteroid - Florence, Italy
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N 43° 46.150 E 011° 15.344
32T E 681553 N 4848708
Benvenuto Cellini’s 1545 bronze sculpture of Perseus with the head of Medusa on a square base with bronze relief panels is located in the Loggia dei Lanzi of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy.
Waymark Code: WMWVEM
Location: Toscana, Italy
Date Posted: 10/17/2017
Views: 8
Perseo con la testa di Medusa"Benvenuto Cellini’s 1545 bronze sculpture of Perseus with the head of Medusa on a square base with bronze relief panels is located in the Loggia dei Lanzi of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy. Also, below the main sculptural event a small relief of the story of Perseus and Andromeda resides, similar to a predella on an altarpiece. The second Florentine duke, Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, commissioned the work with specific political connections to the other sculptural works in the piazza. When the piece was revealed to the public on 27 April 1554, Michaelangelo’s David, Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus, and Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes were already erected in the piazza. The subject matter of the work is the mythological story of Perseus beheading Medusa, a hideous woman-faced Gorgon whose hair was turned to snakes and anyone that looked at her was turned to stone. Perseus stands naked except for a sash and winged sandals, triumphant on top of the body of Medusa with her snakey head in his raised hand. The body of Medusa spews blood from her severed neck. The bronze sculpture and Medusa’s head turns men to stone and is appropriately surrounded by three huge marble statues of men: Hercules, David and later Neptune. Cellini breathed new life into the piazza visitor through his new use of bronze in Perseus and the head of Medusa and the motifs he used to respond to the previous sculpture in the piazza."
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149 Medusa Asteroid"149 Medusa is a bright-coloured, stony main-belt asteroid that was discovered by French astronomer J. Perrotin on September 21, 1875, and named after the Gorgon Medusa, a snake-haired monster in Greek mythology.
When it was discovered, Medusa was by far the smallest asteroid found (although this was not known at that time). Since then, many thousands of smaller asteroids have been found. It was also the closest asteroid to the Sun discovered up to that point, beating the long-held record of 8 Flora. It remained the closest asteroid to the Sun until 433 Eros and 434 Hungaria were found in 1898, leading to the discovery of two new families of asteroids inward from the 4:1 Kirkwood gap which forms the boundary of the main belt.
Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Organ Mesa Observatory in Las Cruces, New Mexico, during 2010 gave a light curve with a rather long rotation period of 26.038 ± 0.002 hours and a brightness variation of 0.56 ± 0.03 in magnitude."
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