Danaë in the Brazen Chamber
After Frederick Augustus Sandys British
Engraver Joseph Swain British
Not on view
When an oracle warned the king of Argos that he would be killed by a grandson, the king locked his childless daughter Danaë in a bronze tower. Artists typically depict Zeus arriving to make love to the girl as a shower of gold, but Sandys imagined an earlier moment in the myth. Dreams of the god have disturbed the princess and caused her to weave his image in a tapestry. Standing in languorous frustration between the textile and her rumpled bed, Danaë raises an arm as if to summon her divine lover. Sandys was influenced by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, admired the prints of Albrecht Dürer, and mastered the inherent linearity of wood engraving. This design was prepared for the journal Once a Week in 1867 but rejected by the editor as too explicit; it was not published until 1888.
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