Perseo affronta Fineo con la testa di Medusa

The painting was created by Sebastiano Ricci between 1705 and 1710, as an oil on canvas.

It was commissioned to illustrate the Ovidian episode from Metamorphoses in which Perseus turns Phineus and his followers to stone using Medusa’s head during a wedding feast at the palace of Cepheus. The work depicts the culminating moment in a mythological narrative set within a grand banqueting hall adorned with columns and arches, where statues of deities line the walls. The composition centers on Perseus, who raises Medusa’s severed head toward his enemies while brandishing a sword, transforming them into stone figures.

By the early 21st century, the painting entered the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where it remains housed.

The painting Perseo affronta Fineo con la testa di Medusa by Sebastiano Ricci is held in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It entered the museum's holdings as part of the Getty's acquisition of works from the Italian Baroque period, and its accession number is not specified in the provided sources. The work has been displayed in exhibitions focused on mythological painting and Baroque art at the Getty, including presentations that contextualize Ricci's contributions to 18th‑century mythological subjects.

The Getty's catalog records the painting as a mythological work depicting the myth of Perseus and Phineus, based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. It has been included in thematic exhibitions exploring narrative cycles in European art, though specific exhibition titles and dates are not detailed in the available documentation.

Sebastiano Ricci's Perseo affronta Fineo con la testa di Medusa illustrates an Ovidian mythological episode in which Perseus uses Medusa's severed head to petrify Phineus and his armed followers during a banquet held in Phineus's brother Cephus's palace; the composition, set within a grand hall of columns and arches populated by divine statues, places the hero centrally as he brandishes the writhing head toward his adversaries while wearing a helmet, sandals, and a red mantle, alongside figures such as the slain Indian archer Ati and references to earlier battles involving Licabas; contemporary scholarship situates this work within Ricci's mythological oeuvre and the broader Venetian tradition of narrative painting, reflecting his engagement with Ovidian sources and the dramatic spatial arrangements characteristic of early 18th-century decorative cycles

Perseo affronta Fineo con la testa di Medusa is a painting by Sebastiano Ricci, created around 1706. It is a representative work of the late Baroque period in Venetian painting.