Danaë

About the Artwork

Danaë’s father feared a prophecy that his grandson would kill him, so he imprisoned his daughter to protect her from suitors. Yet Jupiter, king of the gods, fell in love with Danaë, and he came to her in the form of gold streaming from the sky. Gentileschi adopted Caravaggio’s method of painting directly from models, pulled to the front of the picture plane, which gives the painting a startling, tangible quality. However, the graceful way he handled paint and human gestures lends the work a poetic quality unique to the artist.

Exhibition history

Year in Review: 1971. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 28, 1971-February 6, 1972). Van Dyck. Grande pittura e Collezionismo a Genova. Palazzo Ducale, Venice (March 22-July 13, 1997). Orazio and Artemesia Gentileschi. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy (October 15, 2001-January 20, 2002); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (February 11-May 12, 2002); Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (June 15-September 15, 2002). Caravage et le Caravagisme européen. Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France (organizer) (June 22-October 14, 2012). Bodies and Shadows: Caravaggio and His Legacy. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (organizer) (November 11, 2012-February 10, 2013); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT (March 4-June 16, 2013). Variations: The Reuse of Models in Paintings by Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 11-August 28, 2021).

Quick Overview

Artist: Orazio Gentileschi (Italian, 1563–1639)
Date: c. 1623
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: Framed: 202.5 x 270 x 9 cm (79 3/4 x 106 5/16 x 3 9/16 in.); Unframed: 162 x 228.5 cm (63 3/4 x 89 15/16 in.)
Type: Painting
Classification: Painting
Department: European Painting and Sculpture
Credit line: Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Accession no.: 1971.101

Provenance

1706–1758: Possibly Charles Spencer, Fifth Earl of Sunderland. Private collection, England. 1971: Hazlitt Gallery (London, England], sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art. 1971–present: The Cleveland Museum of Art.

Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.