Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen The Graeae.
The gallery
Perseus and the Graiae
Edward Burne-Jones, 1892
Oil on canvas by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, part of his Perseus cycle and now in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. The composition shows the hero Perseus, in dark armour, slipping among the three grey sisters at the decisive instant of his quest: he has intercepted the single shared eye as the Graeae pass it from hand to hand, holding it just beyond their reach. The sisters, draped in classical robes against a flat decorative ground, grope blindly toward him, while Perseus extorts from them the way to the nymphs who keep the winged sandals, the cap of Hades, and the kibisis. Burne-Jones distils the episode of Apollodorus (Bibliotheca 2.4.2) into a frieze-like ritual of outstretched hands and averted faces.
Perseus Returning the Eye of the Graiai
Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli), c. 1790–1800
A pen-and-wash drawing by the Anglo-Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli depicting the close of Perseus's encounter with the Graeae. Where most images fix on the theft of the eye, Fuseli stages its return: having forced the grey sisters to reveal the road to the Gorgons, Perseus restores their single eye to the clustered, eyeless old women. Fuseli's characteristically charged, muscular figures and dramatic chiaroscuro turn the strange shared-eye motif into a moment of taut negotiation between the cunning hero and the primordial daughters of Phorcys and Ceto, sisters and watchful guardians of the Gorgons.