Danae
(Correggio c. 1489 - 1534)
The only Correggio autograph owned by the Galleria, the Danae was a late addition to the collection, having been acquired in 1827 by Camillo Borghese. The painting represents the episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which the princess Danae is joined by Jupiter in the form of a shower of gold in the tower where she has been locked up, and is part of the “Loves of Jupiter” series commissioned by the Duke of Mantua, Federico II Gonzaga, and gifted to the emperor Charles V, probably on the occasion of the latter’s coronation in Bologna in 1530. (The Berlin Leda and the Vienna Io and Ganymede are also part of the group, of which, with the exception of the latter, the Galleria owns copies, probably acquired by Camillo himself to at least partially reconstruct the series).
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Mantua (Half of the XVI century); sold by Pompeo Leoni to the ambassador of Empereor Rodolfo II ambassador(1603); in Stockolm (1652); in Rome presso Cristina di Svezia (1689); acquired by Pierre Crozat in France (1721); d'Orleans Collection (1727); acquired in Paris by Camillo Borghese (1827).