Perseus Freeing Andromeda Perseus Freeing Andromeda Perseus Freeing Andromeda is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Piero di Cosimo, c. executed in 1510 or 1513. It is housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, Italy. The painting is mentioned in 1568 by Giorgio Vasari, who states that it was commissioned by Filippo Strozzi the Elder, and gifted by Giovanni Battista Strozzi to a member of Cosimo I de' Medici's personnel. The work shows the mythological hero Perseus killing the monster who had entrapped Andromeda. Piero focused on attention to detail in the background, perhaps inspired by the contemporary Flemish school. Details include
Sea monster "Carta marina". This practice died away with the advent of modern cartography. Nevertheless, stories of sea monsters and eyewitness accounts which claim to have seen these beasts persist to this day. Sea monster accounts are found in virtually all cultures that have contact with the sea. For example, Avienus relates of Carthaginian explorer Himilco's voyage "...there monsters of the deep, and beasts swim amid the slow and sluggishly crawling ships." (lines 117-29 of "Ora Maritima"). Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed to have encountered a lion-like monster with "glaring eyes" on his return voyage after formally claiming St. John's, Newfoundland (1583) for