Danaë and the Shower of Gold, 1621–1623
Price range: $295.00 through $540.00
A shower of gold coins pours into a sealed bedchamber, stamped with Jupiter’s head and thunderbolt, and Danaë lifts her hand to meet it. Orazio Gentileschi had the king of the gods arrive as money, and painted the moment more than two metres wide for a nobleman’s palace in Genoa.
Gentileschi learned from Caravaggio to paint from a real model under a hard, dramatic light, then wrapped her in gold satin, white linen and crimson, so the picture is as much about the sheen of cloth as the myth. On a wall it gives off a long, low glow of gold that shifts with the light through the day.
The print
Printed by theprintspace, the East London fine-art lab trusted by artists, galleries and museums. Each print is made to order on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, a heavyweight 308gsm paper made from 100% cotton, with a soft matte surface and a natural white tone, using archival pigment inks made to last for generations.
Photo Rag’s smooth cotton holds the soft glow of skin and the sheen of satin, gold and linen perfectly.
Sizes available:
59×42cm, 23×17″, fine art print, open edition
84×59cm, 33×23″, fine art print, open edition
100×70cm, 39×28″, fine art print, open edition
Safe, tracked delivery guaranteed worldwide, with sustainable packaging.
The story
Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639) was the most inventive of Caravaggio’s followers. He took up Caravaggio’s dramatic lighting and his habit of working from posed models, but softened the realism with his own lyrical sense of beauty. Between 1621 and 1623 he made his name with three paintings for Giovan Antonio Sauli, a wealthy patron who had invited him to Genoa: this Danaë, Lot and His Daughters and a Penitent Magdalene.
The story comes from Ovid. King Acrisius of Argos locked his daughter away to cheat a prophecy that her son would kill him. Jupiter reached her anyway, as a shower of gold, and the son was Perseus. Gentileschi turned the gold into ribbons and coins stamped with Jupiter’s profile and thunderbolt, while Cupid draws back the dark green curtain.
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