Danaë

Danaë is an oil on canvas that Gustav Klimt painted between 1907 and 1908, within the Symbolist current that shaped much of his work in the first decade of the twentieth century. The picture draws on the Greek myth of Danaë, the young woman whom her father Acrisius, king of Argos, locked in a tower of bronze to prevent a prophecy that she would have a descendant who would kill him. Zeus visited her as a shower of gold, and Klimt makes that episode the visual heart of the painting: a golden stream running between the woman's legs, which is usually read as the moment of divine conception. Her half-open mouth suggests a pleasure the painting makes no effort to hide, something unusual in earlier treatments of the subject.

The composition is deliberately ornamental. Danaë lies curled in a fetal pose, wrapped in a purple veil that alludes to her royal lineage, while her rounded, full-bodied form is surrounded by decorative motifs in gold leaf. This stylization has a double effect: it heightens the sensuality of the body and, at the same time, holds the viewer at a distance. The figure seems folded in on herself, absorbed in her own experience, and critics have often read the work as a portrait of female sexuality that is self-contained. The male presence is reduced to a small black rectangle, almost hidden among the ornaments.

The myth had been a favourite with painters for centuries, from Titian to Rembrandt and Artemisia Gentileschi, and Klimt knew a version by Titian in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum. Against that tradition, he turns the story into a meditation on desire and art, in which the female body becomes almost an icon. For this reason the painting is regarded as a telling example of how Klimt fused eroticism, ornament and Symbolism.

Painter

Gustav Klimt

Date

1907

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

77 × 83 cm

Museum

Leopold Museum, Vienna

Movement

Symbolism

Genre

mythological painting, nude

Depicts

nudity, waist-length hair, fetal position, red hair, nipple, Danaë, buttocks, woman

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