Danae 

Correggio painted this sensual depiction of Danae, sometime in the 1520s or 30s, giving visual form to one of the more colourful stories in classical mythology. Danae was shut away by her father, who had been warned that his own grandson would kill him. But Zeus, king of the gods, entered her locked chamber in the form of golden rain, and fathered a son on her. Here, Correggio captures that moment, as a cloudburst of golden coins floods across Danae's body. The artist was working in Parma, at a time when the cultural institutions of the Italian Renaissance were well established. He gives this mythical scene a particularly erotic charge, and it would originally have been viewed within a private, elite context. The image plays with the relationship between gods and mortals, and between gold, love, and beauty. We might ask, does it critique the values of its own society? To understand the painting better, we need to look at the classical sources that inform it, as well as the social context in which it was made and viewed.