licentious and corrupt ways, and Cardinal kind of perverse tribute to its enduring Alessandro (or Titian) found it prudent beauty, the painting was looted by German to transform the all-too-contemporary troops on behalf of Field Marshal Hermann courtesan into a mythological figure Göring during the Second World War and whose nudity was sanctioned by classical was discovered afterward in the Austrian salt precedent. Accordingly, the little dog and mine at Alt Aussee. The canvas was brought the maidservants seen in the background in to the Munich Central Collecting Point by the x-radiograph were replaced by the god the so-called Monuments Men in #($% and of love. The comfortably furnished interior returned to the Italian government two in the first version became the tower in years later. Its presentation in Washington which Danaë, according to legend, had been Fig. " After Michelangelo, Leda and the Swan, marks its second appearance at the National confined by her father, the king of Argos, after '#!(, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London, Gallery of Art, where the Danaë was to foil a prophecy that he would be killed Presented by the Duke of Northumberland, '%!% exhibited in the Titian retrospective of by any son of hers. (Perseus, Danaë’s son by #(() – #((#. Since that time the painting has Jupiter, did eventually kill the king.) created masterpiece in the painter’s studio been cleaned and restored to splendid e!ect. In handling erotic subject matter, in the Vatican. As reported in a famous discretion was required, so not only the passage in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the composition but also the subject of the Artists (#%&'), the great Florentine painter, Photography Credits Danaë (full and details), figs. ! picture was altered to excuse the woman’s sculptor, and architect praised his rival’s and ": Courtesy of the Photography Department of the Superintendency of Cultural Heritage for the City nudity. (Not long afterward the nudes in gifts as a colorist — but, out of earshot, and the Museums of Naples and the Royal Palace Michelangelo’s huge Last Judgment fresco complained that Titian and his fellow of Caserta/Luciano Basagni, Fabio Speranza; fig. #: were discreetly draped so as not to o!end Venetians “had never learned how to Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali/Art Resource, NY; fig. $: Alinari/Art Resource, NY; fig. %: public morality.) Further ensuring the draw!” For Michelangelo, Titian’s figure, © National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY; fig. &: respectability of Titian’s Danaë, the figure however lovely, lacked the basis in disegno, © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado also had a classical source — an ancient or drawing, that underpinned all the arts. cameo (fig. ") once owned by an earlier pope And yet, the Danaë, no doubt with a nod © Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washing- ton. This brochure was written by David Alan Brown and later in the Medici collection. Now to Michelangelo, has a sculptural solidity and produced by the department of exhibition pro- in the National Archaeological Museum, quite di!erent from the painterly freedom grams and the publishing office. General Information Hours: Monday – Saturday, '(:(( am – #:(( pm; Sunday, '':(( am – ":(( pm For information about accessibility to galleries and public areas, assistive listening devices, sign- language interpretation, and other services and programs, inquire at the Information Desks, consult the website (www.nga.gov), or call ()()) %*)-""&( (2.TDD Orizzontale line )()-%*)-"'$"). Admission to the National Gallery of Art and all its programs is free ofItalian charge Preside unlessncy otherwise noted. of the Council of the European Union italia2014.eu Fig. ! Third century AD, Leda and the Swan, cameo, Fig. # Titian, Danaë and the Shower of Gold, '##' – Italian Presidency National Archaeological Museum, Naples '##!, oil on canvas, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid of the Council of the European Union italia2014.eu Naples, this precious object, depicting the of a second version (fig. () of the subject that The exhibition celebrates the occasion of Italy’s related theme of Leda seduced by Jupiter Titian painted for a later patron, Philip II Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the form of a swan, was also known to of Spain. In this work, now in the Museo from July ! through December "!, #$!%. Michelangelo (#$"% – #%&$); his lost painting Nacional del Prado, Madrid, winged Cupid It is organized by the National Gallery of Art of the recumbent Leda was familiar to Titian has been replaced by an old nursemaid, and the Embassy of Italy, Washington, together and other Venetian artists in the form of who greedily gathers the gold coins raining with the Capodimonte Museum, Naples, and the copies (fig. '), including several that Giorgio down from above. Also on a humorous note, Superintendency of Cultural Heritage for the City Vasari (#%## – #%"$) made and brought to Titian has reintroduced the sleeping dog and the Museums of Naples and the Royal Palace Venice in #%$#. The reclining position of from the Venus of Urbino and, heightening of Caserta. Michelangelo’s and Titian’s protagonists and the eroticism of the Prado picture, removed their common source are all closely related. the white sheet that partly covered Danaë’s Generous support is provided by Before Titian personally delivered thigh in the earlier version of the theme. INTESA SANPAOLO. the Danaë in Rome at the end of #%$%, Over the centuries the Danaë in Naples Additional support is provided by Berlucchi Michelangelo went to see the newly has continued to enthrall beholders. In a and Ferrero. *+*+,-’. /,-,0 1234 *56 7,83/+43-*6 49.694, -,8:6. ;9:< # – -3=64>62 ?, ?)#$ -,*+3-,: @,::62< 31 ,2*, A,.5+-@*3- Titian (c. '*%%/&( – '#$"), Danaë, '#** – '#*#, oil on canvas, Capodimonte Museum, Naples *5+. 12,-B:< .6-.9,: depiction of Danaë to reveal Danaë, reclining in bed and about portrait of the boy, also now in the National is one of numerous canvases in which Titian to receive Jupiter, the king of the gods; lured Gallery of Art, marks the beginning of his (Venetian, c. #$''/() – #%"&) established a by reports of the maiden’s beauty, he appears association with the powerful Farnese clan, new genre in Western art, that of erotic to her in the guise of a shower of gold coins. whose patronage resulted in a variety of mythologies. Two of these mythological Danaë’s languorous pose and rapturous gaze portraits of the pope, his family, and their paintings by Titian in the collection of the o!er a sharp contrast to the startled reaction circle. The Danaë was already underway in National Gallery of Art — Venus and Adonis of Cupid, turning away at her feet. September #%$$, when it was mentioned in (fig. #) and Venus with a Mirror (fig. ?) — are an amusing letter written to the cardinal by displayed nearby in gallery M-?C. the papal legate to Venice, Giovanni della In Venice, Titian found little opportunity Casa. Della Casa describes the painting as to paint such subjects. It was only when so shocking it would “make the nude that he began to work for a series of princely Your Reverence saw in the dwelling of patrons in the #%?)s that he added this major the duke of Urbino in Pesaro look like a nun by comparison.” He further jokes that Titian will paint in the face of Alessandro’s mistress (a courtesan named Angela) if the patron so desires. The second female nude referred to in the letter is the famous Venus of Urbino (fig. %), painted by Titian in #%C& – #%C' for Guidobaldo of Urbino, now in the UDzi Gallery in Florence. And, in fact, x-rays (fig. &) have demonstrated that Titian’s Fig. ' Titian, Portrait of Alessandro Farnese, '#*# – '#*", oil on canvas, original concept for the Danaë placed the Capodimonte Museum, Naples subject in a comparable domestic setting with a landscape view out a window, as in Fig. $ Titian, Venus and Adonis, c. '#"(, oil on canvas, Commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro the UDzi picture. At the time, ecclesiastics National Gallery of Art, Washington, Widener Collection Farnese (fig. C), grandson of Pope Paul III, everywhere were under fire for their the Danaë was completed during a visit Titian made to Rome in #%$% – #%$& in order to obtain a lucrative benefice for his shiftless son, Pomponio. Wealthy and worldly, Alessandro Farnese was both a distinguished patron of the arts and a notorious womanizer. Three years earlier the poet Pietro Aretino had urged his friend Titian to paint Alessandro’s younger brother Ranuccio (fig. $), then a student at the University of Padua. Titian’s charming Fig. % Titian, Venus of Urbino, '#!" – '#!%, oil on canvas, Uffizi Gallery, Florence Fig. ) Titian, Venus with a Mirror, c. '###, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection new dimension to his art; the loves of the gods, in particular, were a favorite theme. During the course of his long career Titian became the greatest and most influential interpreter of these amorous episodes, drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and other literary texts. Similar in format and scale to his other canvases, the Naples picture is Fig. ( Titian, Portrait of Ranuccio Farnese, Fig. & X-radiograph of Titian, Danaë, '#** – '#*#, essentially a celebration of the recumbent '#*), oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Capodimonte Museum, Naples female nude. Here a curtain is drawn back Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection 5+.*32< in Europe. The museum itself was a and Spain, after the death of Philip V, from sumptuous palace inhabited by rulers from #"%( to #"''. 31 *56 the eighteenth century to the first decades The founder of the Farnese Collection 1,2-6.6 of the nineteenth century. Capodimonte was Alessandro Farnese (#$&' – #%$(), better 73::67*+3- took on national status only in #(%" and remembered as Pope Paul III (#%C$ – #%$(), is now home to, among much else, a rich who acquired existing works and collection of Neapolitan paintings from commissioned new ones from the greatest the fourteenth to the nineteenth century, artists of the time.