Danae Painting

A modern interpretation of the ancient myth. The sweet princess Danae is imprisoned in a dark jail. Her father’s curse, the unknown destiny and especially an awful loneliness grind her down as an evil oracle. The girl with the beautiful ankles lies on a bed, modestly covered by a drape, wrapped in a melancholic reserve, but all her melancholies instantly vanish. A wonderful pure gold rain penetrates from the bars and wafts on her body: Danea lifts her head, her eyes closed as if she was in ecstasy, and she seems to be willing to welcome it, unaware of all the future misadventures, she only wants to join her divine lover and to conceive the heroic life she has never known. The thousand-year story of Danae was interpreted in different ways: as representing a sort of prediction of the chaste conception of Mary, who was fecundated by the Holy Ghost, in the same way as Danae welcomes in her lap the golden rain of the god, “without sin”. On the other hand, with a complete semantic turnover, it was used to allude to mercenary love, to the courtesans who sell their body, fascinated by the seductive glittering of gold. According to Giulia Quaresima, the secret, the realistic core of Danae’s myth is another one: the eternal feminine desire to generate, the ability to bear every pain, to undergo the most drastic tests, in order to reach the mysterious moment when a woman can finally conceive a new life. This is one of the nature’s secrets from which men are escluded: as in Danae’s mith, where Zeus never appears as a human, but always as a pure and bright idea in a sparkling rain of golden drops.