Danaë

Orazio Gentileschi painted this glowing nude in Genoa in the early 1620s, for a local nobleman named Giovanni Antonio Sauli. The story is an old excuse for a beautiful body. Danae, a princess, was locked in a bronze chamber by her father to keep her from any man, so the god Jupiter came to her anyway as a shower of gold, seen here falling in coins across the sheets and her lap. Orazio had learned the strong light and dark of Caravaggio, whom he knew in Rome, but softened it into something cooler and more luxurious, all pale flesh and crimson drapery. He was also the father and teacher of Artemisia Gentileschi, the finest woman painter of the age. The Getty in Los Angeles bought this picture in 2016.