Catalogue Roberti Fine Art, TEFAF Maastricht 2026 (1) compressed - Flipbook - Page 78
Fig. 1. Johann König, Saint John
the Baptist in a landscape. oil on
copper, 8.5 x 12.3 cm. Private
Collection.
König must have arrived in Italy by 1606/07 since his copy of Veronese's Marriage at Cana was
painted in Venice as early as 1607. He often adopted motifs from Venetian painting, as
demonstrated in his Toilet of Bathsheba (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), whose figures derive from
Domenico Tintoretto’s Susanna in her Bath (fig. 2; Musée du Louvre, Paris), with the architectural
background evidently inspired by Veronese. But it is clearly the work of Titian which is the
inspiration for the present work, for the figure of the naked Danaë is a development of the
Venetian nude which started with Giorgione and was perfected in Titian’s Venus of Urbino in the
Uffizi. Titian’s many interpretations of the subject of Danaë were commissioned by the leading
patrons of his day and can be found today in the world’s most important public collections,
including the Prado, the Kunshistorisches, the Hermitage, and the Museo di Capodimonte. The
Prado version, commissioned by Phillip II of Spain in the 1550s, was the first of the various
treatments of the subject, and formed part of the celebrated Poesie series. König’s interpretation
presented here perhaps most closely follows the Kunsthistorisches version (fig. 3), with the shower
of gold penetrating the scene from upper right.
In Greek mythology, which was adapted and recounted in Latin by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, the
beautiful Danaë was locked away in a bronze tower by her father, King Acrisius of Argos.
Disappointed that he and his wife Eurydice had not produced a male heir, Acrisius consulted an
oracle, who informed him, unexpectedly, that his daughter’s son would kill him. The king thus
banished Danaë to a tower, away from the reach of men but while no mortal could gain access to
Danaë, her imprisonment was no obstacle to Jupiter and his insatiable desire. Taking the form of a
shower of golden rain, Jupiter lay with Danaë and impregnated her, conceiving the boy who would
become the hero Perseus, famed for killing the Medusa and for rescuing Andromeda. When
Perseus was born Acrisius threw both mother and son out to sea in a wooden chest, but Poseidon,
the sea god, calmed the choppy waters and saved them. The tragedy, of course, could not be
avoided: later in life Perseus would indeed kill Acrisius, thereby affirming the inescapability of fate.
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