29 June 2009

Danae: the 19th Century and after



These two pictures from the 19th century do not show the naked Danae and shower of gold we have seen in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The picture on the left shows Danae watching the construction of the brazen tower where her father was to imprison her and was painted by Sir Edward Burne-Jones in 1888. It is now in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, but not on their website. The image (below) is of a photograph of an 1892 painting by John William Waterhouse showing the rescue of Danae and her baby son, Perseus. The painting was stolen in 1947 and has never been recovered. (the picture on the left is from museumsyndicate, all other pictures in this post are from wikicommons, and are in the public domain.)







The above 1907 painting by Gustav Klimt is now in a private collection.

In 1947, Richard Strauss wrote an opera, Die Liebe der Danae. (correction from David Derrick of The Toynbee Convector: Strauss completed the opera in 1940) YouTube has two extracts, one of which is embedded below (discussed in the comments to my post on Danae in the 16th century).

2 comments:

David said...

Robert, Not 1947. Completed 1940.

RWMG said...

I wonder where I got 1947 from then. I would have had to look it up since I don't know enough about Strauss's works to have misremembered. Oh well, my apologies. I'll add a correction.