Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Medea.
The gallery
Medea about to Kill her Children
Eugène Delacroix, 1838
Delacroix's Romantic Medea crouches in a cave with her two sons, dagger ready, the Colchian sorceress frozen at the edge of Euripides' revenge. The Louvre canvas made her fury the nineteenth century's defining image of the abandoned wife who will burn Corinth to ash — motherhood and murder in a single charged pose.
Medea
Frederick Sandys, 1866–1868
Sandys' Pre-Raphaelite half-length shows Medea as enchantress at her work: mixing the poison for Creusa's bridal gift, a coral necklace and magic vessels before her. The painting isolates the Colchian witch's craft rather than the slaughter — intelligence and dread in equal measure. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Jason and Medea
John William Waterhouse, 1907
Waterhouse stages the Colchian alliance before the blood: Medea brews the charm that will protect Jason from Aeëtes' fire-breathing bulls, while the hero waits at her side. The painting catches the romance that Euripides will later destroy — the sorceress still helping the Greek who will abandon her. Private collection; widely reproduced from the artist's late myth cycle.
Vision of Medea
J. M. W. Turner, 1828
Turner's swirling vision places Medea amid the supernatural machinery of her revenge — spells, dragons and the haze of Corinthian catastrophe. Painted in Rome and now associated with the Tate/National Gallery circle of Turner's myth subjects, it dissolves Euripides' sorceress into light and storm rather than a single dagger-blow.
Medea
Artemisia Gentileschi, c. 1620
Gentileschi's Baroque Medea is a solitary half-length of the Colchian witch at work — focused, armed with her craft, already past pity. One of the rare early modern images to give Medea the same fierce agency Artemisia gave Judith, it anchors the figure in the painter's gallery of wronged women who act.
On screen
Medea
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Maria Callas' only film role: Pasolini's Medea as priestess, exile and avenger — the Colchian sorceress who burns her Greek marriage to ash.
Medea
Lars von Trier
Von Trier's stark television Medea, after Dreyer's unrealised script: the revenge in mud and mist, without opera's velvet.
Jason and the Argonauts
Don Chaffey
Harryhausen's Medea is the Colchian ally who helps Jason win the fleece — the romance before Euripides' later blood.