File:Danae by Henri Roux the Elder and Adolphe Bouchet, 1870, drawing of a fresco found in the House of Pansa Pompeii.jpg

English: Plate 122 - Danae by Henri Roux the Elder and Adolphe Bouchet, 1870, drawing of a fresco found in the House of Pansa, Pompeii; Related translated text: The painter of this Danae seems to have adopted the opinion of Hygini, who reports that Acrisius, warned that he would perish by the hand of his grandson, had confined his daughter, not in a tower. of bronze, guarded by stern jailers and formidable hounds, but within an enclosure of walls where there was shade and water, consolations to the poor captive. Jupiter, in love with the daughter of Acrisius, whom he was able to contemplate from the air, extends and descends like a dark cloud over the groves which hide his lover; and the divine germ, which is to give birth to Perseus, falls under the appearance of a golden rain, a rainy gold, as the poet says:

Pluvio Danaë designs auro (1).

Within this landscape, the idea of the corrupting influence of gold seems completely discarded: the god did not want to buy either the guards or his lover; he has taken on only the noblest and most brilliant appearance. We must be grateful to the painter for not having followed the vulgar tradition, which is too distressingly true.

This painting and the nymph we saw earlier (2) were found in an apartment in Pansa's house.

The small fresco in the vignette, representing the combat of a panther and a tiger, was found, more than eighty years ago, in a house of Herculaneum with several other equally bacchanalian subjects. . These frescoes were not painted on the coating of the wall itself, but they were fixed there by small clamps: they had therefore been detached from another wall, no doubt by means of the saw, and by a similar process. to that used by the moderns. This circumstance indicates the value that the Pompeians have made of these small paintings, in which we notice, in fact, much expression and naturalness.