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Lot Essay
The present lot reproduces, in reverse and with variations, a large Danaë (oil on canvas, 170 x 87.5 cm) executed by Girodet in 1798 for the decoration of the salon of a hôtel in the rue du Mont-Blanc built by Charles Percier for the Commissaire Général (and future Minister of Finance) Gaudin; the original version is today in the Museum de bildenden Kunste, Leipzig (illustrated in T. Crow, Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France, New Haven and London, 1995, fig. 152). Although the subject is commonly found in Western painting from the time of the Renaissance, Girodet's interpretation of the theme is unusual: rather than receiving Zeus in her bedchamber, where the god appears transformed into a shower of gold, Danaë is instead depicted at an earlier moment in the tale, when she is nude and in a nocturnal landscape. Girodet's friend and biographer, P-A Coupin (1829) offers the most complete description of the scene:
"In order to enjoy...the freshness of the night and the beauty of the sky, Danaë has ordered her bed to be placed on the top of the tower where she is held. This tower is guarded, for one can see spear-points, and, in order to show that the guards are asleep, the painter has entwined their spears with poppies. Suddenly, flowers scatter on Danaë's bed: she arises in surprise. At the same time, Eros gives her a mirror in which she admires herself with a naive satisfaction.... While she intoxicates herself with the odor of the flowers and with the knowledge of her own beauty, Eros directs to her heart his all-powerful torch: the god can then appear."
The strange, lunar lighting that bathes the scene and the precise botanical accuracy with which the vegetation is depicted are characteristic of the mature works of Girodet. The artist was an enthusiastic student of minerology and electricity and he had been greatly influenced by contemporary British thinkers, in particular by his readings of Young's Night Thoughts and MacPherson's Ossian.
The precise status of the present, unpublished version of Danaë remains to be determined. Sylvain Bellenger believes the work is related to a lithograph of the composition by Aubry-Lecomte, a student of Girodet, that was published in 1824 and reissued in color in 1849 (impressions of which can be found in the Musée Girodet, Montargis and in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris). The panel is in reverse to both the Leipzig painting and Aubry-Lecomte's print, and it includes variations in the turban, cushions and placement of the putto that reappear in the lithograph, suggesting that it might have been painted to serve as a model for the printmaker. The painting's unusually high quality indicates that it was produced in Girodet's atelier under the master's direct supervision, as Bellenger has noted, and possibly with his personal intervention, and could therefore also have been produced as an entirely independent work for the marketplace.
We are grateful to Sylvain Bellenger, who has examined the present lot in person, for his assistance in preparing this entry.
"In order to enjoy...the freshness of the night and the beauty of the sky, Danaë has ordered her bed to be placed on the top of the tower where she is held. This tower is guarded, for one can see spear-points, and, in order to show that the guards are asleep, the painter has entwined their spears with poppies. Suddenly, flowers scatter on Danaë's bed: she arises in surprise. At the same time, Eros gives her a mirror in which she admires herself with a naive satisfaction.... While she intoxicates herself with the odor of the flowers and with the knowledge of her own beauty, Eros directs to her heart his all-powerful torch: the god can then appear."
The strange, lunar lighting that bathes the scene and the precise botanical accuracy with which the vegetation is depicted are characteristic of the mature works of Girodet. The artist was an enthusiastic student of minerology and electricity and he had been greatly influenced by contemporary British thinkers, in particular by his readings of Young's Night Thoughts and MacPherson's Ossian.
The precise status of the present, unpublished version of Danaë remains to be determined. Sylvain Bellenger believes the work is related to a lithograph of the composition by Aubry-Lecomte, a student of Girodet, that was published in 1824 and reissued in color in 1849 (impressions of which can be found in the Musée Girodet, Montargis and in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris). The panel is in reverse to both the Leipzig painting and Aubry-Lecomte's print, and it includes variations in the turban, cushions and placement of the putto that reappear in the lithograph, suggesting that it might have been painted to serve as a model for the printmaker. The painting's unusually high quality indicates that it was produced in Girodet's atelier under the master's direct supervision, as Bellenger has noted, and possibly with his personal intervention, and could therefore also have been produced as an entirely independent work for the marketplace.
We are grateful to Sylvain Bellenger, who has examined the present lot in person, for his assistance in preparing this entry.