Medallion
Medallion - fact Summary
Included in Personae
Included in the collection Personae, Pound's "Medallion" offers a compact visual portrait likening a woman's head to porcelain sculpture and classical iconography. The speaker notes lacquered hair, braided texture, and jewel-like eyes, using art-historical references (Luini, Anadyomene) to make the sitter both objectified and idealized. The poem registers surface, material, and coloration rather than narrative, inviting readers to see the figure as an art object rendered in precise visual detail.
Read Complete AnalysesLuini in porcelain! The grand piano Utters a profane Protest with her clear soprano. The sleek head emerges From the gold-yellow frock As Anadyomene in the opening Pages of Reinach. Honey-red, closing the face-oval, A basket-work of braids which seem as if they were Spun in King Minos' hall From metal, or intractable amber; The face-oval beneath the glaze, Bright in its suave bounding-line, as, Beneath half-watt rays, The eyes turn topaz.
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