Danaë (Artemisia Gentileschi)

The story of Danaë is recorded in Ovid's Metamorphoses and recounts the plight of the daughter of King Acrisius of Argos. A prophecy led him to believe that his grandchild would lead to his death, and therefore imprisoned his daughter to prevent a potential pregnancy. Zeus overcame this challenge by transforming himself into a shower of gold, entering the room and seducing Danaë. She subsequently bore a son Perseus, who went on to kill his grandfather in his adulthood.

The nude figure of Danaë reclines on her richly textiled bed in a darkened space, while her servant wearing a white headscarf in the background collects gold coins in her blue skirts. The pose and design are based on Artemisia's earlier version of Cleopatra.[4] A cleaning completed in 1986 removed old discolored varnish and restored the vibrant colors of the servant's dress.[5]

Unlike most of Artemisia's surviving works, this painting was executed on copper.[4] Given that Orazio was known to work frequently on copper, this has led scholars to debate the authorship between daughter and father.[5] The attribution to Artemisia lies in both the naturalistic rendering of the female form as well as the sensitive portrayal of a woman's distress towards sexual violence.[4]

The painting was created while Artemisia was living in Rome, around 1612.[2] The first documented appearance of the painting was at the Sotheby's sale in Monaco on February 22, 1986, where it was sold as a work of the artist's father Orazio. The painting was subsequently purchased by the Saint Louis Art Museum on August 1, 1986.[7]