A prophecy said her son would kill her own father. So he locked her in a tower with no door for any man to enter. Nothing could keep the sky out.
What you're looking at
This is Danaë, painted by Orazio Gentileschi around 1623, showing a myth from Greek and Roman legend. Danaë's gaze is fixed upward, on what's falling from the dark above her: not a man, but Jupiter arriving as a stream of gold. Behind her, a winged child pulls back a curtain, letting the gold pour through toward her.
A family of painters, and a recurring prop
Orazio Gentileschi trained his daughter Artemisia Gentileschi, who went on to become one of the most celebrated painters of the era in her own right — a fact that makes this particular subject, a woman's body observed and painted by her father, worth sitting with. Look at the gauzy scarf draped across Danaë's body: it's a studio prop that turns up again and again across Gentileschi's other paintings, the same piece of cloth reused from canvas to canvas.
For decades, this Cleveland version was believed to be the only Danaë Gentileschi ever painted. Then a second version surfaced and sold for 30.5 million dollars, proving Gentileschi had returned to this exact subject more than once.
One detail to look for
Follow the gold as it falls. Gentileschi paints it not as light or a glow, but as physical, weighty streams, almost like rain, landing directly on Danaë's skin and the sheets around her.
See it at its real size
Our canvas print is labeled against the true size of the original — 63.8 x 90.0 inches — so what you're hanging is honestly scaled to the painting Gentileschi made. Shop the canvas print.