Dánae

Klimt painted this around 1907, at the peak of his golden phase, when he was working real gold leaf into his surfaces. The subject is Danae from Greek myth, a princess her father had locked away because of a prophecy that her son would kill him. The god Zeus reaches her anyway, coming to her as a shower of gold, and that is the moment Klimt shows. She is asleep, curled up tight, filling nearly the whole canvas, and the gold pours down between her thighs in a river of coins and swirling shapes. The painting is small, only about 77 by 83 centimetres, and it has stayed in private hands rather than a public gallery. It was with a Vienna dealer, the Galerie Wurthle, until the 1990s, and then passed to the family of a private Austrian collector, where it remains.