Orazio Gentileschi: Danaë, c. 1621
Getty Museum acquires Orazio Gentileschi’s ‘Danaë’ The J. Paul Getty Museum has announced the acquisition at auction of ‘Danaë’ (1621) by the famed Italian painter Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639)]]>
January 29, 2016, source: Getty Museum / Sotheby’s / theartwolf.com
The monumental oil painting depicting the classical theme of Danaë and the shower of gold was one of three paintings commissioned together in 1621. At the Getty, it joins another of the three, “Lot and His Daughters”, which has been a standout of the Getty Museum’s collection since 1998.
“Danaë” was the centerpiece of Sotheby’s auction of Old Masters Paintings on January 28th, 2016, when it was described as “one of the finest masterpieces of the Italian seventeenth century and the most important Baroque painting to come to the market in living memory”. The work sold for $30,490,000, against a pre-sale estimate of $25-35 million.
“Orazio Gentileschi’s majestic Danaë is a masterpiece of 17th-century Italian painting,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “With its ambitious scale and wonderfully sensual subject, the picture has been heralded as one of the most important Baroque pictures to come to market in recent memory. Reuniting it with ‘Lot and His Daughters’, with which it was intended to hang as part of a spectacular triad of paintings commissioned by a Genoese nobleman, not only makes art-historical sense but multiplies greatly the visual impact of both works. Baroque paintings were often conceived as ensembles that play off each other in both subject matter and composition, as these two works so clearly do. It is one of those rare acquisitions that also elevates the stature of the paintings collection as a whole.”
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