Antique French school painting from the 1700s - Danaë and Jupiter, the myth of the golden rain

Antique French school painting from the 1700s French school of the 18th century, likely the workshop of Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (Paris, March 6, 1714 – Paris, May 15, 1789) Dimensions: Canvas: 97 x 76 cm With frame: 124 x 96 cm Danaë and Jupiter, the myth of the golden rain Danaë, daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, was locked up by her father in a tower or underground bronze chamber to prevent her from becoming pregnant and giving birth to a son who, according to the prophecy of the Oracle of Delphi, would kill him when he grew up. But Jupiter, falling in love with the beautiful young woman, transformed himself into a shower of gold coins and managed to possess her, penetrating the 'armored' chamber through a crack in the roof. From this union, Perseus would be born, who, unintentionally, years later, would actually kill his grandfather Acrisius. In this representation, Danaë's posture, lying on her side with an elbow on the pillow, seems inspired by 17th-century painting models, where Danaë is immersed in a golden and precious atmosphere. Here, there is no longer a shower of gold: the woman's gaze, not directed upwards, gives the idea of the arrival of a physical person whom Danaë welcomes with a gesture of her hand. Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre He was a student of Charles-Joseph Natoire at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture and painted his self-portrait as early as 1732. As the winner of the Academy's grand prix for painting in 1734, he stayed from 1735 to 1740 at the Académie de France à Rome, then directed by Nicolas Vleughels and later by Jean-François de Troy, to study Italian art and ancient monuments. Back in Paris, he obtained the acceptance (agrément) to the Academy of Painting on April 29, 1741 – equivalent to the right to exhibit at the official Salons – and became an academician on March 31, 1742. Throughout the 1740s, Pierre shone in every genre of painting and obtained numerous commissions, both private and royal and ecclesiastical. The works he presented at the Salons show a great variety of genres: from genre scenes to religious, historical, and mythological compositions, always received with great success. He thus became an assistant professor in 1744 and a full professor in 1748. In 1752, he became the first painter of the Duke of Orléans and produced many designs for the new apartments of the Palais-Royal, where he painted the ceiling of a room with The Apotheosis of Psyche. In 1754, he decorated the private theater of the Duke of Orléans in the faubourg Saint-Martin; in the castle of Saint-Cloud, he frescoed a ceiling in 1768 with the theme of Rinaldo and Armida, and from 1752 to 1757, two domes of the church of Saint-Roch with The Triumph of Religion and the Assumption of the Virgin, which is said to be his masterpiece. Pierre's students included Étienne-Louis Boullée, Louis-Jacques Durameau, Étienne de La Vallée Poussin, Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier, Antoine Vestier, and Hughes Taraval.