Medusa is either of two paintings attributed by Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...

 to Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

. Neither painting survives.

First version

In his Vita di Leonardo

Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects

The Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, or Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori da Cimabue insino a' tempi nostri, as it was originally known in Italian, is a series of artist biographies written by 16th century...

(1568), Vasari reports that, as a very young man, Leonardo represented the head of Medusa

Medusa

In Greek mythology Medusa , " guardian, protectress") was a Gorgon, a chthonic monster, and a daughter of Phorcys and Ceto. The author Hyginus, interposes a generation and gives Medusa another chthonic pair as parents. Gazing directly upon her would turn onlookers to stone...

 on a wooden shield:
Although art historians have doubted the veracity of this anecdote, Leonardo's shield (long since lost) has been said to inspire several early 17th-century painters who may have seen it in the collection of Ferdinand I de Medici. Rubens and Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...

 are known to have painted their own versions of the subject

Medusa (Caravaggio)

Caravaggio painted two versions of Medusa, the first in 1596 and the other presumably in 1597. The first version, also known as Murtula, by the name of the poet who wrote about it is signed Michel A F and is in private hands; the second version, shown here, is slightly bigger and is not signed;...

, but their indebtedness to Leonardo's painting (assuming they had seen it) is uncertain.

Second version

In 1782, Leonardo's biographer Luigi Lanzi

Luigi Lanzi

Luigi Lanzi was an Italian art historian and archaeologist.Born in Treia, Lanzi was educated as a priest. He entered the Order of the Jesuits, resided at Rome and in 1773 was appointed keeper of the galleries of Florence, where he became president of the Accademia della Crusca...

, while making a search for his paintings in the Uffizi

Uffizi

The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...

, discovered a depiction of Medusa's head which he erroneously attributed to Leonardo, based on Vasari's description of Leonardo's second version of the subject:
Lanzi summed up his opinion on the newly-discovered painting in his description of the Florentine gallery:

In the period of Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

, the reputed Leonardo garnered much praise. Its full-page engravings, first produced in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 in 1828, spread across Europe, making the painting one of the most popular in Leonardo's corpus of works. In 1851, Jean Baptiste Gustave Planche

Jean Baptiste Gustave Planche

Jean Baptiste Gustave Planche , was a French art and literary critic.Already in his time as a medical student, Planche frequented artistic circles. This did nothing to promote the success of his studies...

 proclaimed: "I do not hesitate to say that in the Medusa of the Uffizi

Uffizi

The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...

 there is the germ of what we admire in the Gioconda of the Louvre".

As late as 1868, Walter Pater

Walter Pater

Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction.-Early life:...

 (in The Renaissance) singled out Medusa as one of the most arresting works by Leonardo. In the 20th century, Bernard Berenson

Bernard Berenson

Bernard Berenson was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. He was a major figure in pioneering art attribution and therefore establishing the market for paintings by the "Old Masters".-Personal life:...

 and other leading critics argued against Leonardo's authorship of the Uffizi painting. It is now believed to be a work of an anonymous Flemish

Flemish people

The Flemings or Flemish are the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Belgium, where they are mostly found in the northern region of Flanders. They are one of two principal cultural-linguistic groups in Belgium, the other being the French-speaking Walloons...

painter, active ca. 1600.