Medusa's Gaze

This is an exciting book. It is well written, literally hard to put down, with good illustrations and solid notes and bibliography. In many places it is a work of speculation rather than fact, but such is the nature of the Tazza itself, and anyone who reads the book and then sees the object, or has seen it, will never look at it in the same way again. --Duane W. Roller, Classical Journal Marina Belozerskaya has made a well-researched and welcome contribution to Tazza scholarship. With much direct evidence missing, she has still connected the dots of this artifact's remarkable journey. --Amy Henderson, The Weekly Standard This imaginative narrative is an epic romp through history using the Tazza as connective tissue between empires and collectors over a 2,000-year span...More of a cultural history than an art historical analysis (and more fun to read), the book demonstrates the Christianization of Europe and the West through the reinterpretation of the Tazza's iconography. --Publishers Weekly Of all the pitfalls to collecting, however, surely none is more treacherous than the sheer changeability of taste, since what is adored by one generation may well be discounted by the next. That is a point that Marina Belozerskaya decisively proves in Medusa's Gaze: The Extraordinary Journey of the Tazza Farnese, which purports to be about an 8-inch-wide agate bowl carved with mysterious figures... --Dan Hofstadter, The Wall Street Journal Thoroughly researched and well documented, written, and illustrated, this book is an engaging read. --Library Journal The Tazza Farnese is one of the most extraordinary--and beautiful--art objects to have survived from the classical world. Medusa's Gaze tells its intriguing and dramatic story from the first century BC to the twentieth AD. A gripping and very surprising book. --Mary Beard, Cambridge University With a good sense for both the scholarly and the sensational the author takes us through the history of the West's obsession with precious stones and gems, using as a key the probable history of one of the finest examples, from the days of Cleopatra to destruction at the hands of a museum attendant in 1925. --Sir John Boardman, Oxford University [A]n excellent choice for inspiring nonprofessionals to become excited by the cultural history of ancient objects. --American Journal of Archaeology