Results: 1
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View: Detail
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- After François Boucher (1703 - 1770)
- Danaë
- France
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- Date: c. 1760 - 1780
- Object Type: Painting
- Medium: Oil on canvas laid down on panel
- Image size: 19.3 x 22 cm, oval
- Inv: P766
- Location: Not on display
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- Description
- Provenance
- Further Reading
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- The story of Danaë is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (IV, 697-8). Her father, Acrisius, King of Argos, fearful of his prophesied death at the hands of a future grandson, imprisoned Danaë in a bronze tower to keep her suitors away. Jupiter, however, visited her in a shower of golden rain, and the outcome of their union was the hero Perseus, who did indeed kill his grandfather, albeit accidentally, with a discus. Here the princess is shown reclining on cushions in an interior pervaded by the golden light of Jupiter.
The same figure can be found in a Boucher drawing (last recorded in the Rodrigues sale, Paris, 28 November 1928), and in a miniature by Charlier (M139) in the Wallace Collection, which suggests that all three works derive from a lost original by Boucher. The figure of Callisto in a painting of Diana and Callisto by Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre in Madrid, Prado is also related, the painter might be of Pierre's generation.
- The story of Danaë is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (IV, 697-8). Her father, Acrisius, King of Argos, fearful of his prophesied death at the hands of a future grandson, imprisoned Danaë in a bronze tower to keep her suitors away. Jupiter, however, visited her in a shower of golden rain, and the outcome of their union was the hero Perseus, who did indeed kill his grandfather, albeit accidentally, with a discus. Here the princess is shown reclining on cushions in an interior pervaded by the golden light of Jupiter.