Lot 2176 Nα

The list of artists who took the mythological theme of "Danae and the Golden Rain" as their subject is long and prominent: From Titian in 1545 to Rembrandt in 1636 and Gustav Klimt in 1907. It is fairly certain that the possibility of painting a sensually charged female nude was the main motive of all artists in choosing this subject, and the Viennese painter Alexander Rothaug in particular is unlikely to have been an exception. On the contrary, the depiction of scantily clad women makes up a not inconsiderable part of his oeuvre, be it mermaids, figures from Germanic mythology or the goddesses of Greek and Roman antiquity. In the present painting, it is Danae, who was imprisoned by her father Acrisius, King of Argos, on the basis of an oracle, and who Zeus was only able to approach through the roof of her prison in the form of a shower of golden rain. The image is dominated by the figure of the light-skinned female nude on a bright orange bed. Above her, in the narrow upper section of the painting, hovers a mighty cloud from which the golden rain pours down on the naked Danae.
We would like to thank Dr Horst G. Ludwig, Munich, for verbally confirming the authenticity of this work upon examination of digital photographs.