Image Details

Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz

The wild eye and protruding tongue of the gargoyle on the facade of Washington’s National Cathedral exuberantly animates the fossil-like stone (see photo of gargoyle). A similar effect was achieved 2,500 years ago by a Corinthian vase painter who created a bellowing, starkly white ketos (shown here) with an out-thrust tongue. The scene on the vase illustrates the story of Perseus’s rescue of Andromeda—whose parents, to appease the wrath of the sea god Poseidon, offered their daughter as a sacrifice to a sea monster threatening the shores of Joppa (modern Jaffa, Israel).