Danae

Danae, Naples

Danae, Madrid, Museo del Prado

In 1554, shortly before Philip II left for England to marry Mary Tudor, Titian sent his first Poesia, the Danae (Madrid, Museo del Prado) for Philip’s camerino in the Royal Palace in Madrid, Spain.  Titian returned to a subject that he had painted during the previous decade for the Roman Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (Naples).  In designing his canvas for Philip II, Titian borrowed Danae’s pose and several iconographic details from his earlier work, however, he altered a number of major elements in the scene and consequently, he varied his entire interpretation of the myth as well.  Titian’s composition may depict the myth of Danae, but not as it is presented in the artist’s supposed source.  In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Danae is hardly mention at all and only in the context of her son’s encounter with Andromeda, when Perseus introduces himself to the princess’s parents by proclaiming:

My name is Perseus, son of Jupiter and of Danae, whom Jupiter made pregnant with his fertile gold, and that though she was imprisoned in a tower.

The Farnese’s painting is marked by a sculptural style and a monumental setting dominated by a huge Doric column.  As Jupiter arrives in a burst of golden rain and coins, a cupid turns towards the right, cringing before the god’s explosion.  Quite differently in Philip’s painting, a rough masonry wall replaces the column and reveals a more open sky; a dog sleeps (a  popular emblem of marital fidelity) next to a more upright Danae; the sheet no longer conceals her thigh and her left hand is between her legs; and an old hag appears in place of Cupid.  Moreover, the scene is portrayed with a network of loose impasto brush strokes that are loaded with heated tones of red, gold, and turquoise.  Reddish contours are everywhere on the figure in combination with the red drapery, the red trim of the pillow, the red bed clothe and the reddish shadows on Danae’s body.  The brightest lights are painted with impasto in Danae’s pearl earring and the glow in her eye, the light around the clouds and the bells on the sleeping dog’s collar.

            Danae’s characterization as a courtesan had the literary endorsement of such influential masters as Horace, among the ancients and Boccaccio, among the Italians.  Describing Jupiter as the money of bribery, Horace associates Danae’s guardians as pimps and Danae, herself to be a harlot.  Boccaccio was even more damning, characterizing Danae as an adulteress and concubine and concludes that she sold herself to Jupiter.  But Titian contradicts these accusations with the visual evidence of Danae’s emotion as she receives her lover.  In Titian’s Danae, the two women (Danae and old hag) do not collaborate as harlot and pimp.  On the contrary, the maid is presented as Danae’s opposite, both physically and morally; while Danae sees her lover in the shower that she welcomes in her womb, the result being the conception of Perseus, while on the other hand, the hag sees only gold that she seeks to catch in her apron.  The hag lusts only for money, and perhaps Jupiter has indeed bribed her; but Danae’s response is passionate, not illicit.  Titian does not seek to deny Boccaccio’s claim that the description of Danae’s Beauty had aroused Jupiter’s desire, but reasserts the importance of sight as the influential language of love.  In doing so, Titian confirms ancient and Renaissance theories about love that it is communicated first through sight, as the superior sense as sight dominates sound and painting rewrites poetry.