World Museum Masterpieces at the State Hermitage Museum: Danae by Corregio from the Borghese Gallery (Rome)
29 February 2008 - 4 May 2008

From 29 February to 4 May 2008, at the State Hermitage Museum Correggio’s Danae from the Galleria Borghese in Rome will be on display.

Antonio Allegri (1489-1534), better known as Correggio (after the location where he was born) belongs to the pleiad of the Renaissance’s greatest masters. Danae is one of a series of pictures painted by him on the amours of Jupiter: Io, Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle and Leda. Correggio worked on these canvases at the beginning of the 1530s for Duke of Mantua Federico II of Gonzaga.

Correggio’s work is original and he used a different approach for Danae in comparison to his contemporaries. Correggio’s heroine seems to be extremely young. She admires herself and pays little attention to the gold coins falling from heaven. Correggio was always concerned about the problem of lighting. The light source is based in the right part of the composition. The rays turn the edge of the canopy golden and saturate Danae’s body in contrast to the shadows, and help to create a sensation of tangibility with the solid boyish figure of Cupid.

The mediaeval treatment of the image of Danae, who was seen as the personification of chastisty and associated with the divine conception of Mary was understood anew to the renaissance sense of hedonism, with the celebration of human feelings and physical grace.

Correggio’s influence on art in the following periods is great. Antonio Allegri’s drawing became the source and ideal for masters of Italian academic art of the 17th century. The artists of the 18th century valued Correggio for the virtuosity of his paintings, their lightness and grace, all of which anticipated the rococo.