I recently visited the Girodet exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago and it was awesome. Here is a visual index to some of the works. This piece, Mademoiselle Lange as Danaë has a funny story behind it....
"You didn't mess with Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. Mademoiselle Lange, a notorious actress, learned this the hard way when she and her wealthy husband commissioned a portrait, then asked the painter to remove it from public display at the Paris Salon of 1799 and, worse, tried to stiff him on the payments. Girodet (1767-1824) promptly removed the canvas from its frame and slashed it to bits, sending these to Mlle. Lange. With surprising speed, he returned to the Salon with a new painting in the same frame: a portrait of the actress as Danae, one of the mythical lovers of Zeus, who spilled himself over her in the form of a cascade of gold.
It wasn't a compliment. It was a savage and unusually vindictive satire, exposing the actress as narcissistic, greedy and adulterous. Crammed with symbols of lust, avarice and cupidity, "Mademoiselle Lange as Danae" features the actress focused on the gold coins rather than the mirror in her hand -- which, in any case, is cracked. Her husband appears as a turkey with the tailfeathers of a peacock. A dove, symbolizing fidelity, is being strangled by a cord attached to a scale used for weighing money. Beneath it is a mask of Mlle. Lange's lover, its eyehole stuffed with a coin -- literally blinded by gold."
The exhibit is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago until April 30, then it will be shown at:
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 24–August 27, 2006. Montreal, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, October 12, 2006–January 21, 2007
Mademoiselle Lange as Danaë
