Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Polydectes.
The gallery
Perseus Promises Polydectes to Kill Medusa
Unknown (Veronese master), c. 1475–1500
An anonymous late-Quattrocento Veronese panel, now in the Museo Civico Amedeo Lia in La Spezia, capturing the moment that sets Perseus' whole saga in motion: the young hero pledges before the enthroned king Polydectes of Seriphos that he will return with the head of the Gorgon Medusa. It is a rare Renaissance image of Polydectes himself rather than the later climax, freezing the boast that the scheming king extracts to rid himself of Danae's protective son. The decorative classicizing court setting is typical of north-Italian humanist painting reviving Greek myth as moral narrative.
Polydectes Turned Into Stone by Perseus
Willy Pogány, 1921
A plate by the Hungarian-American illustrator Willy Pogány from Padraic Colum's The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles (1921), depicting the saga's revenge climax: returning to Seriphos, Perseus raises the severed head of Medusa before the predatory king and his court, and Polydectes is instantly petrified for having coveted Danae and plotted Perseus' death. Pogány's sinuous Art Nouveau line frames the frozen tyrant as the just punishment of the hero's quest, making this one of the few well-known modern images to name and show Polydectes' death directly.
The Story of Perseus and the Gorgon's Head (book illustration)
Unknown (after Charles Kingsley, W. T. Stead edition), 1898
An illustrated page from the Perseus retelling in Charles Kingsley's The Heroes, issued in W. T. Stead's popular 'Books for the Bairns' series and held in Maastricht University's special collections. The Perseus narrative it accompanies turns on Polydectes, the king of Seriphos whose lust for Danae and demand for a wedding-gift drives Perseus to vow the Gorgon's head and ultimately to petrify the king on his return. The image belongs to the late-Victorian wave of moralizing mythology for young readers that kept the Seriphos episode, and its villain Polydectes, in wide circulation.