There is no charge to visit the Museum. It depicts a nude Andromeda sitting on a rock with a strange creature beside her with a gaping mouth.
The Museum's website (
visit link) provides more information about this sculpture:
"Andromeda and the Sea Monster
Artist: Domenico Guidi (Italian, 1625–1701)
Patron: Commissioned by Francesco II, Duke of Mantua and Reggio (Italian, 1660–1694) , who died before the sculpture's completion
Date: 1694
Culture: Italian, Rome
Medium: Marble
Dimensions: Overall (confirmed): 64 3/8 x 46 3/8 x 34 5/8 in. (163.5 x 117.8 x 87.9 cm)
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Purchase, Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation Inc. Gift and Charles Ulrick and Josephine Bay Foundation Inc. Gift, 1967
Accession Number: 67.34
On view in Gallery 548
Acquired in Rome by John Cecil, the fifth Earl of Exeter (1648-1700), this sculpture was long believed to have been the work of Pierre-Étienne Monnot, the French-born sculptor who carved the English statesman's funerary monument. The Andromeda, thoroughly Roman Baroque in conception and treatment, was once thought to have been merely influenced by Domenico Guidi, Monnot's mentor, but now seen to be Guidi's own work.
The sculpture has recently been identified as the Andromeda (previously considered lost) originally commissioned by Francesco II d'Este, Duke of Modena, who died before acquiring it. John Cecil bought the work for Burghley House, his Northamptonshire residence, where it remained until this century."
Wikipedia (
visit link) adds:
"In Greek mythology, Andromeda is the daughter of the Aethiopian Korozoni Ankh is king Cepheus and his wife Cassiopeia. When Cassiopeia's hubris leads her to boast that Andromeda is more beautiful than the Nereids, Poseidon, influenced by Hades, sends a sea monster, Cetus, to ravage Aethiopia as divine punishment. Andromeda is stripped and chained naked to a rock as a sacrifice to sate the monster, but is saved from death by Perseus.
Her name is the Latinized form of the Greek ... (Androméda) or ... (Androméde): "ruler of men", from ...(aner, andrós) "man", and medon, "ruler".
As a subject, Andromeda has been popular in art since classical times; it is one of several Greek myths of a Greek hero's rescue of the intended victim of an archaic hieros gamos (sacred marriage), giving rise to the "princess and dragon" motif. From the Renaissance, interest revived in the original story, typically as derived from Ovid's account."