Danaë

In

Disappointed by his lack of male heirs, King Acrisius asked the oracle of Delphi if this would change. The oracle announced to him that he would never have a son, but his daughter would, and that he would be killed by his daughter's son. At the time, Danaë was childless and, meaning to keep her so, King Acrisius shut her up in a bronze chamber to be constructed under the court of his palace (other versions say she was imprisoned in a tall brass tower with a single richly adorned chamber, but with no doors or windows, just a small air vent as the source of light and air). She was buried in this tomb, with the intent that she be closed off from all others for the rest of her life. However, Zeus, the king of the gods, desired her, and came to her in the form of golden rain which streamed in through the roof of the subterranean chamber and down into her womb. Soon after, their child Perseus was born.

Unwilling to provoke the wrath of the gods or the

• Danaë in art
• 
  Jan Gossaert, 1527
• 
  Danaë

  , 1531–1532.
• 
  National Museum of Capodimonte

  , Naples
• 
  Hendrick Goltzius, 1603
• 
  Artemisia Gentileschi, c. 1612
• 
  Danaë by Orazio Gentileschi, 1621–23.
• 
  Danaë

  , c. 1636.
• 
  Danaë receiving

  Jupiter in a Shower of Gold, by Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller

  (1787)
• 
  Jacob van Loo, 1650s
• 
  Gustav Klimt's Danaë, 1907.

Citations

General and cited references

• Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Danae" , Acri'sius

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Danae.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Danae".

• The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (images of Danae)