On-line gallery
- Reference number
- P00425
- Author
- Titian [Vecellio di Gregorio Tiziano] (Italian)
- Title
- Danae receiving the Golden Rain
- Chronology
- 1553
- Technique
- Support
- Measures
- 129,8 cm x 181,2 cm
- School
- Theme
- Shown
- No
- Entrance
- COLECCIONREAL
- Procedence
- Royal Collection
The myth of Danae tells how
Acrisius, King of Argos and father
of Danae, consulted an oracle who
foretold his death at the hands of
his grandson. In order to avoid
this, he locked Danae in a tower,
which failed to prevent Zeus from
possessing her in the form of
golden rain.
Titian had approached this subject
years earlier (naples, Capodimonte
Museum), and the similarities
between the two paintings are
obvious, but so are the
differences. The Prado Museum's
Danae, with its less clear profiles
and looser brushstrokes, surpasses
the Neapolitan work in
sensuality.
For Felipe II, Titian painted a
series of works known as “Poetry”
based on classical texts, mainly
Ovid's Metamorphosis. Two of them
—Danae and Venus and Adonis (P422)—
are in the Prado Museum. Other
works in this series include Diana
and Acteon, Diana and Calixto (both
at the National Gallery in
Edinburgh), The Rape of Europe
(Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
Boston) and Perseus and Andromeda
(The Wallace Collection, London).
Titian himself chose the subject
matter for these works, which he
called “Poetry” and, beyond
symbolic or moral interpretations,
they were conceived as paintings to
delight the senses.
The “Poetry” paintings appear in
the inventories of Madrid's Alcázar
Palace beginning in 1623. They
entered the Prado Museum collection
in 1827.
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