Jupiter Entering Danaë's Chamber

For most of its known life this little copper went under other painters' names. In 1724 it was in the Paris collection of Philippe d'Orléans, regent of France during the boyhood of Louis XV, listed with no artist at all. Soon afterwards it was being called a Rottenhammer, after a German painter of small mythologies on copper, and it was engraved under that name for a printed album of the Orléans pictures. The collection was sold off in London in 1793. In the 20th century a French dealer's label gave it to Frans Floris, and at a Paris auction in April 1979 it was offered as attributed to Platzer, an 18th-century Austrian. The Louvre used its right of pre-emption to buy it there, as a work by Joachim Wtewael from around 1595 to 1605.

The story is Danaë's, shut away by her father, the king of Argos, because an oracle said her son would kill him. Jupiter reached her as a shower of gold, and here his eagle announces him. On the left her old nurse drops her spinning in alarm, and the reel, the spindle and the distaff lie on the floor.