Danaë, nude, reclines on the bed in the foreground and lifts her arms above her head to receive the shower of gold coins. Behind Danaë an old woman catches more coins in her apron, and surrounding Danaë four putti play with the coins.

The story is a famous and popular one in painting. It is briefly referred to in Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book IV, lines 610-11. Danaë’s father locked her in a tower to keep away suitors, because it had been foretold that he would be killed by his daughter’s son. Jupiter visited her in a shower of gold, and Danaë bore Perseus, who accidently killed his grandfather. Titian produced several versions of the subject, at least one of which was engraved at an early date, and this probably exercised an influence on Gennari. The detail of the old woman greedily trying to catch the coins, for example, seems to derive from Titian.

A pupil of his uncle Guercino, Gennari came to England in 1674 and was considerably patronized by King Charles II and his court. Gennari’s MS. records that this work was painted for Charles II and placed in his new apartments at Whitehall, though he says of the work: ‘Questo quadro l’ebbe Sua Maestà’, perhaps indicating that Charles had not directly commissioned it (MS. B344, Archiginnasio, Bologna, fol. 12, no. 24). Other versions of the composition exist, including a copy that was made for the Duchess of Devonshire.

Signed on the coffer, left: GENNARI