Getty Museum Buys Gentilischi for $30.5m, Reunites Painting with One of Two Other Works

Sotheby’s sold Orazio Gentileschi’s Danae, which was consigned by dealer Richard Feigen, to the Getty Museum for $30.5m. Here’s the Getty’s press release:

The J. Paul Getty Museum announced today the acquisition at auction of Danaë (1621) by the famed Italian painter Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639). The monumental oil painting depicting the classical theme of Danaë and the shower of gold was one of three paintings commissioned together in 1621. At the Getty, it joins another of the three, Lot and His Daughters, which has been a standout of the Getty Museum’s collection since 1998.

“Orazio Gentileschi’s majestic Danaë is a masterpiece of 17th-century Italian painting,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “With its ambitious scale and wonderfully sensual subject, the picture has been heralded as one of the most important Baroque pictures to come to market in recent memory. Reuniting it with Lot and His Daughters, with which it was intended to hang as part of a spectacular triad of paintings commissioned by a Genoese nobleman, not only makes art-historical sense but multiplies greatly the visual impact of both works. Baroque paintings were often conceived as ensembles that play off each other in both subject matter and composition, as these two works so clearly do. It is one of those rare acquisitions that also elevates the stature of the paintings collection as a whole. ”