The Reawakening of ‘Sleeping Danae’

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s prized Dutch Mannerist painting is looking better than it has in, say, 300 years.

“The Sleeping Danae Being Prepared to Receive Jupiter” by Hendrick Goltzius is back on view after a year’s absence, a thorough cleaning and an expert conservation treatment. Stripped of old varnish, freed from discolored restorations and deftly repaired by conservator Joseph Fronek, the 1603 painting basks in a rosy light and sports formerly hidden details.

Fronek knew he had embarked on more than a routine cleaning job when he immediately discovered a painted pilaster under the gloom of varnish on the far left side of the 5 1/2x6-foot canvas. By the time he had finished the project, he had recovered so many details of drapery and modeling that the painting appears far more dimensional.

The voluptuous nude Danae fairly glows with an inner light, and the formerly yellow skin of an old woman beside her now reflects the red background. A drape under the nude has changed from murky dark green to a lighter bluish green, while drops of gold raining down from the sky have multiplied. Feathers on the wings of putti who carry bags of gold appear so fluffy that they might have been plucked from a bird.

An old woman attending the sleeping beauty is “so much uglier after cleaning--and I mean that in a good way,” Fronek said. “She’s as ugly and decrepit as Goltzius intended.”

The transformation is stunning, but it’s unlikely to be fully appreciated by visitors who can’t compare the refurbished painting with the dirty one. The nude sleeping peacefully in the Dutch-paintings gallery of the Ahmanson Building offers no hints of what she’s been through. The painting was X-rayed and photographed with infrared film, and tiny samples of paint were examined under a microscope--all to determine the extent of damage and differentiate original material from later additions. The cleaning and removal of old restorations exposed cracks and abrasions that Fronek filled with a white putty-like material, then “inpainted” with a water-based paint.

Despite damage, which may be the result of rolling the canvas for shipping or using harsh solvents in earlier cleaning, the delicately painted work is in surprisingly good condition, Fronek said. Now that his work is complete, the composition is undisturbed by paint losses and abrasions. A new coat of varnish makes the colors deeper, richer and more translucent.

Nearly five years ago, when the museum unveiled its newly acquired, if unclean, Goltzius, “The Sleeping Danae” seemed to be in a state of sensual splendor. Specialists could see that the varnish had yellowed and that restorers had probably obscured details by painting over damaged areas. But few viewers noticed these flaws. They were swept away by news of the acquisition and charmed by the painting itself. At the time there was much to consider:

-- The museum’s purchase, for $675,000 at a Butterfield’s auction in San Francisco, brought to public view an Old Master artwork that had been squirreled away in private collections for about 30 years. The painting had been seized by the Internal Revenue Service from Los Angeles businessman Eugene Allen and consigned to Butterfield’s to pay his back taxes.

-- “The Sleeping Danae” is one of about 40 known Goltzius paintings and the first major painting by an artist who is better known as an engraver. LACMA curators consider “The Sleeping Danae” the best of three Goltzius paintings in American public collections. The other two are at Princeton and the Rhode Island School of Design.

-- Even in less-than-pristine condition, the painting was so rich in detail and deftly crafted with glowing color and suggestive imagery that it inspired admiration for its technical accomplishment and seductive mood.

-- The theme of the painting is a racy Greek myth, to the delight of those who like art to tell a story. According to legend, Danae was locked in a tower to avoid her foretold fate of giving birth to a son who would kill her father, the king of Argos. Jupiter, who lusted after Danae, visited her as a shower of gold brought to the tower by an eagle. Danae became pregnant after Jupiter’s symbolic visitation. Her father put her in a chest and cast it out to sea, but she was fished out alive. Danae then gave birth to Perseus, who eventually killed his grandfather with a discus.

For all these reasons, the Goltzius went on view at the museum soon after it was acquired, but about a year ago it was removed to the conservation laboratory. Looking back on his labors, Fronek said that the size of the painting, its complex composition and the numerous restoration procedures make it the most difficult project he has undertaken in his three years as the museum’s conservator of paintings.

Goltzius painted “The Sleeping Danae” several years after a trip to Italy where he was influenced by Titian, said Philip Conisbee, curator of European paintings and sculpture at LACMA. The painting’s theme and interpretation are both indebted to Titian, and “the harmony of reds in the background is very Titianesque,” he said.

Goltzius was immensely popular in his day (1558-1617). His engravings were widely distributed throughout Europe and his Italianate paintings were highly prized around Haarlem, where he lived, Conisbee said. The naturalism of Rembrandt and Franz Hals soon obscured the Dutch Mannerist style, however. Today Goltzius is known mainly to scholars, who credit him with being among the first painters of historical subjects in the Netherlands.