Danae

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Danaë receives the golden rain
(detail from a red-figure bell crater from Boeotia , around 450 BC, Louvre in Paris)

Danaë ( ancient Greek Δανάη ) was in Greek mythology the daughter of Akrisios and Aganippe , lover of Zeus and with him mother of the hero Perseus .

myth

Akrisios, king of Argos , had a daughter but no male heir. Warned by the oracle (“You will have no sons and your grandson will kill you.”), He keeps the still childless Danae in a dungeon that is secured with bronze doors and guarded by wild dogs. According to other sources, she is locked in a bronze tower. But Zeus, the father of the gods, desires her and finds access to her through the roof of the prison by turning into a golden rain. Danaë bears him the son Perseus .

To avoid his fate, Akrisios locks Danae and her baby in a small wooden box and sets them out to sea; but Zeus' brother Poseidon smooths the sea so that they do not drown. When they wash ashore on the Cycladic island of Seriphos , the fisherman Diktys retrieves them and brings them to his brother Polydektes , who is king of the island. Polydektes, however, begins to pursue Danaë, but Diktys, like Perseus later, know how to protect her. So it was only convenient for Polydektes that the brisk youth Perseus wanted to hunt for the head of the gorgon Medusa , which turned anyone who looked at it to stone.

There is no escape from the oracle: a discus from Perseus, hurled in a competition on his return, is so distracted by the gods that the grandfather Akrisios is fatally hit.

As Abas' granddaughter , Danaë was given the nickname Abantias (Greek Ἀβαντιάς ).

Interpretations

Night sea voyage

The journey across the sea in a box, chest, wicker basket or ark - the psychologists speak of a night sea voyage threatening life and mental health , in which parallels to the Egyptian myth of Osiris , but also to the biblical Moses and the Akkadian legend of the Sargon are striking Danaë also appear as the moon goddess or moon maiden, who gives birth to Perseus as a "divine child". Danaë's multiple disappearances and reappearances also reflect the cycle of the moon. In the myth of the golden rain, an archaic union of the (male) sun and the (female) moon can be read. In the context of the understanding in the interpretive space of the Greek pastoral myths, Zeus finally appears as the god of thunder, who brings gold, which is considered to be the life-giving water in the pastoral culture, over the woman H. over the earth.

Corrupting Power of Money

On the other hand, there is the understanding of the myth as a symbol of the deadly sin Avaritia (greed): The seduction of Danaë by a golden rain is used to point out the corrupting power of gold, which overcomes all obstacles (including chastity). In this interpretation, the central female figure becomes a prototypical prostitute . It can be traced back to antiquity ( Ovid , Horace , to whom Augustine explicitly refers; on the threshold of the Middle Ages, powerful Christian reception by Fulgentius ; representation by Otto van Veen : Emblemata horatiana ) and gradually becomes predominant (e.g. Giovanni Boccaccio's De genealogia deorum gentilium ); It can be considered dominant from the 16th century at the latest.

Representation in art

Antiquity

The myth of Zeus' lover Danaë appears as a motif in ceramic paintings as early as ancient Greece, where she is still shown sitting and fully clothed, occasionally with her gown open to receive the gold dust. Only with a Roman wall painting in Pompeii (around 70 BC) is an unclothed Danaë recorded. It remains a common motif, for example in mosaics, where the figure is placed in the dance of Jupiter's lovers .

middle Ages

Danaë (detail)
(Jan Mabuse, 1527, Alte Pinakothek , Munich)
Danaë
( Alexandre Jacques Chantron , 1891)
Danaë
( Gustav Klimt 1907/08 in Vienna, private possession)

Two interpretations of Danaë lived on in the Middle Ages. On the one hand, it is interpreted as a prefiguration of the Virgin Mary , because she too received a virgin (among others, in John Ridewall : Fulgentius Metaforalis ) and understood as an allegory of pudicitia , virtuous chastity. In the fine arts, until the Renaissance, it was therefore sometimes assigned the blue coat color of the Mother of God. (cf. Jan Mabuse's work of 1527) Panofsky suggests this reading for Rembrandt's Danaë of 1636.

Renaissance and Baroque

It is true that the processing of the subject in the Renaissance began relatively late, which, according to Panofsky, is due to the lack of available ancient models; The Danaë then developed into a history motif popular with the courtly hedonistic society , as it allows the implicit representation of the sexual act. There are many examples of the processing of the theme by the Dutch Mannerists . Basically two types can be distinguished from the middle of the Cinquecento :

  • the Leda type goes back to two works by Titian , the Neapolitan Danaë for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese - this version is presumably a courtesan portrait, for this genre of Venetian painting the Danaë is a mythological fig leaf that is both relational and obvious - and the Prado version commissioned Philip II. This type is characterized by the way in which the Leda Michelangelo is represented and the copies of this lost work, including Michelangelo's sculpture of the night . While the main character remains passive, the assistant characters ( Cupid or wet nurse ) are the bearers of the activity and determine the expressive content, which is more the erotic aspect (Cupid as a witness to overcoming chastity, Neapolitan version ) or the moral aspect (wet nurse gathers the gold, Prado version ). The combination of these figures became popular in Flemish painting; this has a potentiating effect on the content of the message or, as a new allegorical meaning, creates the figurative juxtaposition of the opposites love and money. This combination can also be found beyond such. B. in the courtly portrayal of Danae by the Venetian Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in the 18th century.
  • the Venus type can be considered the works that are in the tradition of Danaë Annibale Carraccis , who in turn refers back to Titian and Giorgione . Here the main character has an active eroticism, which is characterized by inviting gestures and turning of the body (quite ambivalent to the father of the gods or actually to the voyeuristic viewer) through to physical aggressiveness, which is intensified by spatial effects. The tradition of such stimulating portraits of Danae seems to be known as far back as Roman antiquity. The decent rendering ( decorum ) demanded by contemporary morality becomes threadbare by reducing the iconological accessories. The erotic charge increases to the same extent. This point of view comes to a head with Giulio Bonasone , where it emerges openly as pornography .

Classicism and modernity

The topos remains a recurring theme in art through classicism to modernism . Art's preoccupation with him can be interpreted as an expression of the discourse on masculinity and femininity. Gustav Klimt's 1907/08 discussion of Danaë can serve as the best-known example , whose accessories have been withdrawn in favor of an abstraction. The female figure itself appears narcissistic - autoerotic and self-fixated to the point of autism . The ornaments in the foreground on the right are interpreted as blastocysts , the existence of which the artist is said to have learned from Berta and Emil Zuckerkandl . The male principle, on the other hand, becomes a mere ornament or a fetish in the abstract background .

See also

swell

literature

Web links

Commons : Danaë  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b Hyginus Mythographus Fabulae 63
  2. ↑ cf. Ranke-Graves 2003
  3. ↑ “ The gold is mightier than the thunderbolt. “, S. Horace: Odes , Book 3, XVI, I-II
  4. ↑ Mythologiae I, 19
  5. ↑ Pecunia donat omnia ; Mixing with the Christian moralizing interpretation of Venus. See p. 127f of the Enblemata (PDF file; 22.10 MB)
  6. ↑ Stefan Grohé: Rembrandt's mythological histories . Cologne: Böhlau, 1996.
  7. ↑ Whereby, as must be remarked restrictively with regard to Ridewall, this chaste Danaë is then, as it were, desecrated by gold (“auro violata”), thus adding an aspect to the pure representation of chastity.
  8. ↑ Erwin Panofsky : The fettered Eros. On the genealogy of Rembrandt's Danaë. 1933.
  9. ↑ Processing of the material by Cornelis Ketel , Joachim Wtewael , Hendrick Goltzius , Johan Wierix , Frans Menton , Jakob Matham , especially to be emphasized by Denys Calvaert
  10. ↑ Terence 's comedy Eunuchus contains a corresponding passage (lines 583 ff.) To which Augustine also commented. Its far-reaching reception may have contributed to keeping this Danae in the consciousness of contemporaries.
  11. ↑ see Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat : Art, Sexuality and Gender Constructions in Occidental Culture . In: Franz X. Eder, Sabine Breakfast (ed.): New stories of sexuality. Examples from East Asia and Central Europe 1700-2000. Vienna: Turia & Kant 2000. pp. 69–92 ( PDF ( Memento of September 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ))
  12. ↑ Klaus Taschwer : Gustav Klimt's golden secret. In: Daily newspaper “ Der Standard ” - Science / Research / Special, 7./8. December 2010 page 17. Vienna. Citing research by the biology historian Sabine Brauckmann.