Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Euryale.
The gallery
The Gorgons Stheno and Euryale Pursuing Perseus (Attic black-figure lekythos)
Unknown (Attic vase-painter), c. 530 BC
On this Attic black-figure lekythos, now in the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (inv. 277), the two immortal Gorgons Stheno and Euryale stride forward in furious pursuit. They are the surviving sisters of Medusa, whom Perseus has just beheaded, and Greek myth holds that they alone could never be slain. The painter renders them in the canonical archaic Gorgon type — broad grimacing faces, bared tusks, and lolling tongues — caught mid-run with the swift winged gait that signals their flight after the hero. This is one of the rare works to name Euryale explicitly alongside her sister rather than folding the trio into the single figure of Medusa.
Dinos of the Gorgon Painter: Perseus Pursued by the Gorgons (Louvre E 874)
The Gorgon Painter, c. 600–580 BC
The name-vase of the early Attic black-figure master called the Gorgon Painter, this large mixing bowl (dinos) from Etruria is now in the Louvre (E 874). The frieze on its shoulder narrates the climax of the Perseus story: at the left lies the headless body of Medusa, while her two immortal sisters, Stheno and Euryale, race to the right after the fleeing hero. Among the earliest extant renderings of the chase, it fixes the visual formula that later vases would repeat — the surviving Gorgons, Euryale among them, hurtling in vengeful pursuit with snake-fringed heads, gaping mouths, and outstretched arms.
Running Gorgon Pursuing Perseus (Attic red-figure amphora)
The Berlin Painter, c. 490 BC
Attributed to the Berlin Painter, one of the foremost red-figure artists of late-archaic Athens, this amphora in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich (inv. 2312) shows a single Gorgon in full flight, while the reverse depicts Perseus escaping with his sickle and winged boots. The pursuing sister is one of the two undying Gorgons, Stheno or Euryale, who chase the hero after Medusa's death. The painter softens the older grotesque mask into an elegant, dynamic figure, her drapery and limbs swept by the speed of the chase — an image of Euryale and her sister in their defining mythic role as the immortal avengers of Medusa.