Hello and welcome to Apsley House. I'm Josephine Oxley, the Keeper of the
Wellington Collection and we're in the Wellington Collection at Apsley House
in London and we're going to talk about this wonderful painting by Titian.
It's Titian's 'Danaë'. It hangs here in Apsley house in this wonderful Piccadilly room.
Apsley House houses a wonderful collection of paintings, over 300
paintings on show here, paintings that include Titian, Velázquez, Rubens,
Brueghels...we have an outstanding collection of paintings here at Apsley House.
Many of these paintings actually came from the Spanish Royal Collection
including Titian's 'Danaë'. Now it probably has one of the most exciting stories
attached to any collection anywhere.
The reason these paintings are here is because they were captured on the
battlefield in northern Spain at the Battle of Vitoria in 1813 and these
paintings, over 200 paintings, were in the baggage-train of Joseph Bonaparte,
Napoleon's brother. The French had invaded Spain. They had been there for
eight or nine years. Wellington led a force of Anglo-Spanish
troops who defeated the French armies and at the very last battle on the
Spanish mainland in 1813 Joseph Bonaparte brought this enormous baggage
train onto the battlefield and it contained lots of paintings that he had
taken from the Spanish Royal Collection. The Spanish Royal Collection, being the
best collection in Europe, had an outstanding array of Titian's,
of Raphael's, all the great Italian masters but also some wonderful Spanish
paintings which weren't that known outside of Spain and the paintings were
rescued by the Duke of Wellington because, of course, Apsley House is the 1st
Duke of Wellington's home. The paintings were rescued by him and brought back to
London and then later they were gifted to him by Ferdinand VII of Spain.
So, at Apsley House today we have 83 paintings in the
public part of the house that were part of the Spanish Royal Collection
including four paintings by Velázquez and three paintings by Titian and many
more so when you come to see Apsley House you'll be able to see this
outstanding collection. The Spanish collection forms the core of the
collection and then the Duke goes on to collect many other paintings, notably
Dutch paintings and a lot of wonderful contemporary paintings but that's why
Titian's 'Danaë is here in Apsley House and it's one of the most significant
paintings in the Wellington Collection: an outstanding example of a later Titian
painting and this painting was started in 1551. It was commissioned by the then
Prince Philip, later Philip II of Spain, and he was heir to the most powerful
throne, the most powerful monarchy in Europe. His father, Charles V of Spain, was
hailed as the new Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor. Their territory
stretched all across Europe and so they were great patrons of art and in fact
Philip's father had also been a patron of Titian and had commissioned many
portraits and other works. Now Philip, as a prince, had a fairly well-developed
aesthetic sense. He was very interested in art, he knew what he wanted
to do and what he wanted to commission. When he met Titian, which he did twice;
once in Milan and once in Augsburg, both times Titian painted a portrait of
Philip, very important portraits; the main one, which you see today in the
Prado. Philip asked him to paint a series of paintings based on mythological
stories. So these 'poesie', as they became known, these six paintings were based on
Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', an epic poem, although Titian didn't always stick to
the story and he did rather invent some of the scenes but here we have this
wonderful Danaë and she's the first in this series. So she's the first
painting that Philip II receives from Titian and she is a mythological
princess. She is the daughter of King Argos and she is here shown imprisoned.
The reason she's imprisoned is that her father is told through a prophecy that
her son will murder him so, to stop her giving birth or getting married, he
imprisons her. You see it looks like a rather attractive prison
but apparently it was a place where she was completely enclosed. Now she is
seduced by the god Jupiter, the most important of gods, and the way that he
enters her bedchamber is through a little chink...the little chink
in her armour here and, as you can see at the top of the painting,
there is this golden shower which rains down on her and she is portrayed here in
the most sensual way. The thing about the 'Danaë'...it's probably the most eroticly
charged painting in the series of the 'poesie'. All the 'poesie' show a great
deal of naked flesh. It was a great way of Titian showing his power of
representing the naked female form but I think that the 'Danaë' is the most
sensuous of those females that are portrayed in the series of paintings. She
does indeed bear a child to Jupiter, Perseus. She is set adrift and she does
have a life after this imprisonment. What is wonderful here as well is
that Titian has set up a great contrast so on one side of the painting
we have this handmaiden, effectively her jailer perhaps, who is also trying to
participate in this golden shower. You see that she's holding up her apron to
receive some of the joy of this whole seduction scene. She's an old
lady, she's painted in these very earthy colours. The contrast between her and the
princess Danaë couldn't be greater. She's old, she's painted in dark colours.
Danaë is young, she's painted in this luminous way that Titian had with
painting flesh where he painted layer upon layer of thin glazes to create this
luminosity and even when you look very closely at Danaë's body, you will
see little bits of grey as well, little bits of grey pigment, just
accentuating her flesh. She's shown in a very languid, erotic pose. Now this wasn't
the first time that Titian painted the 'Danaë'. 10 years previously he had
painted a version of this for Cardinal Farnese in Naples which is still
in Naples today. It's slightly different: the legs are positioned differently, she
has a little lap dog curled up by her hand. So it's his second adventure into
the idea of portraying Danaë and when this painting went, a couple of years ago,
to the Prado for an exhibition, luckily for us they undertook some wonderful
conservation work which really revealed an enormous amount about the painting.
The painting was very dark pre-2014. There was some doubt as to its quality
because it was badly damaged when it was taken into the
studio. The Conservator there realised there was a lot of over-painting, the
reds were very dull. The bit that had retained its true look of quality was
the body of Danaë herself. Titian has painted her in a lead white which is
quite a robust pigment so she had retained some of her glory but even so,
the conservation process revealed the true nature and the beauty of her body.
It almost looks like there's a sort of light behind her, the way that he lights
her up is wonderful and as you get closer and closer to the painting you
see these wonderful touches, dark touches, throughout her body which sort of
accentuate the outline. She sits on this wonderful satin sheet but it's not
painted to be in a high sheen, it's painted in a very subtle way and
she's reclining on these pillows and then the beautiful reds in the curtain
on that side of the painting. The other side of the painting is a very
sharp contrast: there's still some damage here. We don't know when the painting was
damaged. It certainly came to Apsley House more or less in the state
that it is now, of course with a lot of over-painting and darkening varnish
over 200 years, but the other exciting thing that happened in the
Prado, when it was being conserved, was that, out of its frame, we can see quite
clearly that it's been cut down and this is really important because, seen with
the other five paintings, it seems to have a very different shape so often
it's been thought not to be part of those 'poesie' but actually, if we look at
it and see that it's been cut down, we will know that it had more of a square
format like the other 'poesie' paintings. So the conservation has informed an
enormous amount about what we know about this painting. Now seeing the 'poesie'
together which, of course, they were always intended to be seen together,
we don't know whether Philip had a particular room that he intended to show
them in but they were supposed to be seen together.
What will strike the viewer will be the sensuousness of these paintings all
together in one room for the first time in hundreds of years. This will be a very
exciting reveal because these paintings will talk to each other. If you look at
the Prado painting which was the second painting in the series, the 'Venus
and Adonis', unlike the 'Danaë' which has this full frontal naked woman,
in the Prado painting her back is towards us so Titian is able to explore
a very different way to show a female form, a lot more sculptural, but
there's a front-facing female, a back-facing female and these paintings will
make so much more sense when we see them altogether which, of course, we will when
they are all exhibited together at the exhibition. And when this painting leaves
Apsley House, we will be able to replace it with another painting here,
because we have so many paintings in the Collection, but for us the significance
of the exhibition overrides us having this gap because it's a
once in a lifetime opportunity to see these six paintings together and I think
that when we see them together we will learn even more about them.