At the Salon in 1795 Jean-Baptiste Regnault presented an oval work, a Head of Danaƫ, together with a more narrative but smaller version of the subject: the heroine on a bed, receiving Jupiter transformed into golden rain.
The latter was engraved by Chaponnier in 1804, together with its pendant, Io and Jupiter. In the catalogue of the artist’s posthumous sale of 1 March 1830, late replicas of these two erotic subjects are followed by two busts of DanaĆ«: no. 18 is described as “DanaĆ« receiving the golden rain.
Head and bust only; oval shape”, and no. 74, as “A young female nude, sleeping in the pose of a DanaĆ«”. One of them had mostly likely served as the model for the engraving published by Loquemin and Gigoux in 1829. While all these factors do not make identification of our picture easy, its quality unarguably points to the hand of Regnault.
The transparency of the shadows, the delicate details of the lips and hands, and above all the suppleness of modeling whose small brushstrokes give the flesh its vibrancy, correspond closely to his late manner, and demonstrate that he was capable until the end of virtuoso portrayal of the voluptuous female nude. Oil on canvas, Christieās Catalog, 2016.
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