This over life-size figure clenches her left hand at her chin in an attitude of tense contemplation, while with her right she clutches a dagger. Here William Wentmore Story depicts Medea, lost in thought, scheming her revenge against Jason. In the Greek tragedy by Euripides, Medea is the sorceress who assisted the Argonaut, Jason, in obtaining the Golden Fleece; she later became his wife.

When Jason abandoned her for his new love, Creusa, Medea murdered her two children by Jason and plotted Creusa’s death. In Story’s statue the action is mental and thus unseen, but not unfelt. The viewer beholds an enraged figure at a meditative juncture and is left to imagine the scene of infanticide to come.

Story’s immediate inspiration was a contemporary version of the tragedy by Ernest Legouvé, in which Medea kills her children out of extreme love and devotion rather than allow them to be taken from her and raised by Jason and Creusa. For nineteenth century audiences Medea’s deep grief transformed her into a sympathetic character driven to an unspeakable act.

Medea was the earliest of Story’s mature works to be exhibited and widely known in the United States. The Metropolitan’s example was carved in Rome in 1868, where Story worked for four decades.