Petrifying Gazes: Danae and the Uncanny Space

Of all the ancient myths where rain plays an important role, the

impregnation of Danae by Zeus through a golden rain is perhaps the one

most often depicted in art. This essay is dedicated to the artistic

afterlife of the myth, with special focus on the painting of Danae

(1527) by Jan Gossaert van Mabuse (1478-1532).

Gossaert’s Danae is a sophisticated articulation of outer and

inner discourse: the hard, dry, background, with its eclectic

architecture, in contrast with the sweltering, moist, foreground with

the figure’s naked body. This essay develops Gossaert’s complex

phantasmata surrounding architecture, decoration, and the female

body in three spaces: the intimate space of impregnation, the

psychosomatic space, and, third, the petrifying space of Medusa.

Barbara Baert writes:

Danae is the living emanation of painting as the uttermost

exhibitionistic medium. Her unveiled skin fragile exposed in the midst

of an overwhelming symphonic outburst of details, facades, windows.

Danae: martyr of glossy materials - marble and flesh - unable to

disappear in her own skin; held hostage within a medium of walls. Her

only desire is to disappear in the ultimate thin membrane, to vaporize

beyond the harsh brocks and, then, at the very end, leave the medium of

textile too. There were threads become drippings, lines become tears.