Danaë (Titian paintings)

The works influenced the compositions of many artists including Rembrandt,[5] Anthony van Dyck and Gustav Klimt, who all painted versions of the scene.

[6] According to Greek mythology, as it would have been known to Titian through Ovid's Metamorphoses, Boccaccio's Genealogia Deorum Gentilium, and probably Terence,[7] when her father Acrisius consulted the oracle on how he would get male children, he was told that his daughter would bear a son who would kill him.

Acrisius then locked up and guarded his daughter Danaë in a subterranean dungeon, or alternatively a windowless tower room – a detail Titian ignores in most versions, giving a view at least to the sky on the right of the picture.

[10] When Acrisius learned of Danaë's son Perseus, he refused to believe Zeus's role, and cast mother and child adrift at sea in a chest.

[12] Kenneth Clark sees the Danaë as Titian adopting the conventions for the nude prevailing outside Venice; "in the rest of Italy bodies of an entirely different shape had long been fashionable".

[14] George Bull suggests as sources Primaticcio's painting of the subject at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, which Titian probably knew from a print, and Correggio's Danaë (c.

[15] After the original in Naples, where Cupid is to her right, he is replaced by an elderly maid, holding out a cloth or dish to catch the gold coins spilling down from an explosion of colour in the sky which represents Zeus.

The papal nuncio in Venice saw it in progress, and in September 1544 wrote cheerfully to the cardinal comparing it to Titian's earlier nude, the Venus of Urbino.

[19] The features of Danaë, broadly retained in the later versions, are based on the cardinal's courtesan mistress Angela; Giulio Clovio had sent Titian a likeness from Rome for him to use.

The Council of Trent began in December 1545 as it was being finished, and the cardinal became worried about an overt display of his affair; even though few would see the paintings in his private apartments, word would no doubt get around.

The base of a large classical column occupies the background of the centre of the painting, and to the right of that there is an elevated view of trees and distant hills, not very clearly defined.

The other major Danaë versions all replace the large column with more red drapery, and (except for Chicago and St Petersburg) have an even less clearly depicted outside background, mainly of sky.

The burst of light that showers coins and on which Danaë's heavy gaze falls is flanked by dark clouds that appear to be moving towards the centre of the canvas.

After a quick look, Wellington and his staff thought there was nothing very important or valuable in it, but sent the imperial by sea to his brother William, Lord Maryborough (then) in London for a proper check.

[32] The Prado version is now agreed to be one painted around 1565, which only joined the Spanish royal collection in the 17th century, bought in Italy by Velasquez, and sold to Philip IV of Spain.

[37] The version in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, includes much work by members of Titian's workshop, as revealed by the heavier treatment of Danaë's skin-tone and body as well as the hanging drapery.

[39] A version that is significantly different in several details appears to have been lost, and is known only from reduced copies by David Teniers the Younger, made when it was in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in the Spanish Netherlands.

In this, although the bed and bed-clothes remain the same, the setting has been moved outside, with a distant landscape shown, and though there is an old women at the right, she is much more sympathetically portrayed and is accompanied by a young goat, so presumably represents a goatherd or similar figure.

When Michelangelo and Giorgio Vasari visited Titian at his temporary studio in the Vatican Belvedere in November 1545, they were shown the original Farnese Danaë, then in the process of completion.

He has a noble spirit; but as of present having no knowledge of design, he in his imitations of the life corrects nothing nor attempts to make it better, though possessed of a manner so easy and beautiful, so full of truth and animation.

[41] The Madrid version of Danaë is no longer thought to be part of the commission from Philip II for seven mythological paintings by Titian, but rather a later addition to the royal collection.