Retrato de Mlle. Lange como Dânae

In the summer of 1799 the actress Anne Françoise Elisabeth Lange looked at the portrait Girodet had painted of her, decided it was unflattering, and refused to pay for it. Girodet cut that canvas into pieces and, over about 19 days, painted this in its place, then hung it at the Paris Salon for the whole city to read. He cast her as Danaë, the mythical woman visited by a shower of gold, greedily catching coins in a sheet. Almost every object around her is a coded insult about her lovers and her money. The small winged figure helping gather the gold is her own young daughter, and the turkey at her feet, wearing a wedding ring on one foot, stands in for the husband she was said to have married for his fortune.