Petrifying Gazes: Danae and the Uncanny Space (Studies in Iconology, 19) 9789042946385, 9789042946392, 9042946385

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S T U D I E S I N I CO N O LO G Y 

Petrifying Gazes Danaë and the Uncanny Space Barbara Baert

P EE T ER S

PETRIFYING GAZES

PETRIFYING GAZES Danaë and the Uncanny Space

BARBARA BAERT

PEETERS LEUVEN–PARIS–BRISTOL, CT 2021

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization.

ISBN 978-90-429-4638-5 eISBN 978-90-429-4639-2 D/2021/0602/109 © 2021 – Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium)

“That’s a secret, private world you’re looking into out there. People do a lot of things in private they couldn’t possibly explain in public.” (Detective Doyle in the movie Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), 1954)

Contents 1. Introduction ......................

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2. A Story About Rain ...................

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3. A Story About Gold and the Sea ...............

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4. The Intimate Space of Impregnation .............

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5. The Psychosomatic Space .................

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6. Painting, Folds and Moi-Peau ...............

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7. Petrifying Gazes ....................

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8. During that inexhaustible intercourse…............

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Illustrations.....................  Bibliography ....................  Index nominum ...................  Colophon ..................... 

1 Introduction

 (I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands. Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond (Edward Estlin Cummings (1894-1962))

Fig. 1. Jan Gossaert van Mabuse (1478-1532), Danaë, 1527, oil paint on oak panel, 114 cm × 95 cm. Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek

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Of all the ancient myths where rain plays an important role, the impregnation of Danaë by Zeus through a golden rain is perhaps the one most often depicted in art. This essay is dedicated to the artistic afterlife of the myth, with special focus on the painting of Danaë (1527) by Jan Gossaert (van Mabuse) (1478-1532) (fig. 1).1

The story of Danaë was a frame story for the Perseus myth.2 Danaë, Perseus’ mother, was locked away in an impenetrable tower of bronze (or in some versions of the story, iron) by her father Acrisius, king of the Greek city-state Argos. An oracle had warned Acrisius that he would one day be killed by his grandson. As a precaution, the king locked up his only daughter, planning to keep her there until she was too old to have children. But Zeus had become interested in the beautiful virginal Danaë, and penetrated the tower in the form of a golden shower of dust through the opening (in other versions, through a grate) in the upper vault – the classic oculus – and impregnated her womb. Danaë gave birth to Perseus. Acrisius, still fearing the oracle’s prediction, had mother and child locked into a wooden chest, and cast them into the sea. They eventually washed ashore on the island of Seriphos, where a friendly fisherman named Dictys took them in and cared for them. When Perseus grew up, Danaë told him the truth about his birth and his childhood. * The Danaë by Jan Gossaert is one of the earliest Renaissance interpretations of the myth, and precedes famous versions by Correggio (1489-1534) (fig. 2), Titian (1490-1567) (fig. 3) and Tintoretto (1518-1594) (fig. 4).3 Some scholars assume that Gossaert’s Danaë was painted for Philip of Burgundy (1464-1524), admiral of the Burgundian-Habsburg fleet, Bishop of Utrecht and Lord of Utrecht from 1517 onwards.4 Philip died in 1524, several years before the painting was finished.

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Fig. 2. Antonio da Correggio (1489-1534), Danaë, 1531, oil paint on canvas, 161 cm × 193 cm. Rome, Galleria Borghese

Jan Gossaert’s interpretation of the myth was underappreciated for a long time.5 In 1923, Achille Segard (1872-1936) described the Danaë as a mindless woman, incapable of thought, whose only job was to sit still and look pretty for the nude genre.6 Max Friedländer (1876-1958) considered Gossaert’s painting as unbalanced when it came to quality.7 In the 1965 exhibition in Rotterdam, the work is not even mentioned.8 Robert Wolf and Roland Millen (1968) are the harshest with their criticism. According to the authors, this Danaë is a peasant girl in disguise, a farmer amidst a mess of architectural elements, painted by a man who was lost in his own urban memories.9 Only Wolf-Dieter Dube’s book on the collection of the Alte Pinakothek of Munich shows an appreciation for the complex architecture in the background, which reveals a lot of expertise on late-Gothic and Renaissance architecture across Mediterranean and North-European borders.10 Dube notices that due to the lack of landscape,

introduction

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Fig. 3. Titian (1490-1576), Danaë, 1553-1554, oil on canvas, 129 cm × 180 cm. Madrid, Museo del Prado

Danaë is depicted as crushingly lonely. The painting is literally bursting at the seams, which combats the sensual meaning of the mythological subject. Despite the ambivalent reaction to the aesthetics of the painting, Gossaert’s Danaë did influence the broader iconological interpretation of the theme. In his Der gefesselte Eros, Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) makes a connection between Danaë and the late-Medieval, early-Humanist use of purity allegories.11 Panofsky recognizes a typology between Danaë and the virgin conception of Mary, supported by 15th-century treatises and their illustrations.12 The tower that protected her virtue represented Chastity.13 Danaë became a symbol of modesty, of Pudicitia, but conversely, she also became a moralizing exemplum for the distressing violation of this chastity. The Dominican monk Franciscus de Retza (c. 1343-1427) wrote in his Defensorium Inviolatae Virginitatis Mariae: “If Danaei conceived from Jupiter through a golden shower, why should the Virgin not give birth when impregnated by the Holy Spirit?” A block book of this

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Fig. 4. Tintoretto (1518-1594), Danaë, 1578, oil on canvas, 142 cm × 182 cm. Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts

treatise (Basel, 1490) shows a woodcut in which Danaë receives beams of sunlight as a Christian ‘cleaner’ version of Zeus’ original golden raindrops (fig. 5). Nevertheless, Erwin Panofsky senses that the Danaë of Jan Gossaert is more ambivalent then a pure chastity allegory, due to the complex architecture at the background and the many windows that give an uncanny second level in the painting. He formulates this intuition in a footnote: Dass Jan Gossaert der Vorstellungsweise des Fulgentius Metaforalis verpflichtet ist, bedarf kaum der Erörterung: auch bei ihm trifft der goldene Regen, in dichter Tropfenfolge senkrecht herabströmend, eine recht dezent bekleidete, sitzende Danae, deren überkuppeltes halbrundes Wohngemach durch die Eigenart der Fensteraussicht noch immer eine Erinnerung an das ‘Situ sublimata‘ des alten Textes vorauszusetzen scheint.14

introduction

Fig. 5. Danaë in a Tower, illustration from Defensorium Inviolatae Virginitatis Mariae, fol. 12, Franciscus de Retza (1343-1427), c. 1490, woodcut. New York, Spencer Collection, New York Public Library

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Erwin Panofsky also refers to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published by Aldus Manutius (1449-1515) in Venice in 1499 for Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (1472-1508). This curious dream story and quest contains a woodcut with Danaë indeed, riding an antique carriage in a triumphant procession, surrounded by Christian chastity symbols, like the unicorn (fig. 6).15 At the bottom, the impregnation of Danaë takes place on her bed, and next to it, we can see the birth of Perseus. Within the hybrid storm of fiery rain filling the room, at the same time, the syncretic space between medieval purity ideals and the emancipation of Danaë as embodiment of ancient virtues shone through. The humanist Pierio Valeriano (1477-1558) explains: The poets related that gold poured into the lap of Danaei, the most beautiful of women. They mean by Danaei the beauty of the soul, which comprises the natural virtues that God loves; indeed, they signify by the ‘golden shower’ the abundant flow of heavenly favor, which must be sought from the love and mercy of God. In truth, the abundance of all Blessings is given by God alone.16

In her article Elisabetta Gonzaga come Danae, Monica Centanni takes a closer look at the exemplary function of Danaë through examining a medallion by Adriano Fiorentino (1440-1499) made for Elisabetta Gonzaga (1471-1526) (fig. 7).17 The Duchess of Urbino, a loving and faithful wife and a “golden virgin” was doomed to sterility because of her husband’s known impotence, but she hoped for a miraculous impregnation.18 The motto on the medal – HOC FUGIENTI FORTUNAE DICATIS – is an expression of her hope, suggesting that Elisabetta, like Danaë, had dedicated herself to Fortuna fugiens: the instant and unexpected Fortune.19 In 1495, Elizabeth still hoped she would share Danaë’s fate. Here, Danaë has emancipated herself into a woman who, between modern virtue and Christian virginity, desires a pregnancy. In her catalogue Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures. Jan Gossart’s Renaissance, Maryan W. Ainsworth follows the humanist readings of Gossaert’s Danaë, as they were championed by Eric Jan Sluijter.20 Sluijter pushes the religious interpretation from Panofsky’s article completely aside and claims that the original ancient myth was consciously being made erotic. Sluijter thinks that the suspected client – Philip of Burgundy – must have felt a connection to the theme

introduction

Fig. 6. Attributed to Francesco Colonna (1433-1527), Triumph of Danae, illustration from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 1499, woodcut, 30.5 cm × 20.5 cm. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

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Fig. 7. Adriano di Giovanni de’ Maestri also named Adriano Fiorentino (1440-1499), Medallion for Elisabetta Gonzaga, 1495, bronze, 83 mm. London, British Museum

Fig. 8. Danae stands by her bed, holding out her dress to catch the golden rain sent by Zeus to impregnate her, scaraboid, Greece (Early Classical), engraved red jasper, 17 mm. Boston (MA), Museum of Fine Arts.

introduction

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for some reason, as a purist-humanist.21 Philip took a profound interest in classical texts and surrounded himself with humanists and artists. Moreover, Philip himself was a collector of gems and antique jewels, an important medium through which the Danaë iconography had been spread during antiquity (fig. 8).22 I am of the opinion that the religious and humanist typology do not have to exclude one another. The contrast between the two is cancelled out within the “psycho-spatial space” (Raumlichkeit).23 In Gossaert’s Danaë this space concerns the sophisticated articulation of an outer and inner discourse: the hard, dry, external space with its eclectic architecture, in contrast to the sweltering, moist, internal space of her naked body. I will develop Gossaert’s complex phantasms surrounding architecture, decoration, and the female body in three different spaces: the intimate space of impregnation, the psychosomatic space as (Un) heimlichkeit, and finally the space of the petrifying gazes. But first some more stories about rain, gold and the sea…

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petrifying gazes Jan Gossaert, Danaë, 1527, Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, signed on the stairs below Danaë’s feet as: “JOHANNES MALBODIUS PINGEBAT 1527.” The earliest relatively complete story of Danaë was written by Apollodorus (middle of the first century BC); Apollodorus, The Library II. ii. 1-2, (Loeb Classical Library, 122), London, 1954: I, 147); Publius Ovid’s (43 BC-17) Metamorphoses mention only the conception in Book IV; Publius Ovid, Metamorphoses, transl. Anthony S. Kline, http://www.gleeditions.com/metamorphoses/students/toc. asp?lid=108; Last accessed 12 February 2021; François Lissarrague, Danaé, métamorfose d’un mythe, in Mythes grecs au figuré de l’antiquité au baroque, eds. Stella Georgoudi & Jean-Pierre Vernant, Paris, 1996, p. 105-133. Antonio da Correggio, Danaë, 1531, Rome, Galleria Borghese; Titian, Danaë, 1553–1554, Madrid, Museo del Prado; Tintoretto, Danaë, 1578, Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts. Eric Jan Sluijter, Emulating Sensual Beauty. Representations of Danaë from Gossaert to Rembrandt, in Simiolus. Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 27, 1999, p. 4-45, p.10. André Corboz, La “Danae” di Mabuse (1527) come testimonianza dell’idea di Sancta Antiquitas, in Artibus et Historiae, 21, 42, 2000, p. 9-29. Achille Segard, Jean Gossart dit Mabuse, Brussels - Paris, 1923, p. 49. Max Friedländer, Jan Gossart and Bernart van Orley, Berlin, 1930, p. 33. Henri Pauwels, Hans R. Hoetink & Sadja J. Herzog, Jan Gossaert genaamd Mabuse, (exh. cat.), Rotterdam, 1965, passim. Robert E. Wolf & Roland Millen, Geburt der Neuzeit, Baden-Baden, 1968, p. 174. Wolf-Dieter Dube, The Pinakothek Munich, New York, 1974, p. 122-124.

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Erwin Panofsky, Der gefesselte Eros (Zur Genealogie von Rembrandts Danae), in Oud Holland, 50, 1933, p. 193-217. Erwin Panofsky, o.c., p. 206-207. Madlyn Millner Kahr, Virtuous, Voluptuous, Venal Woman, in The Art Bulletin, 60, 1, 1978, 43-55, p. 44. - See also: William S. Heckscher, Recorded From Dark Recollection, in De artibus opuscula XL. Essays in honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. Millard Meiss, New York, 1961, p. 187-200, p. 192: “And yet, it is Pudicitia at bay”; Salvatore Settis, Danae verso il 1495, in I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 1, 1985, p. 207-237. Erwin Panofsky, o.c., p. 206, note 1. Francesco Colonna, Hypnotomachia Poliphili, eds. Giovanni Pozzi & Lucia A. Ciapponi, Padua, 1964, I, p. 162. Madlyn Millner Kahr, o.c., p. 44-45, note 16; Ioannis Pierii Valeriani Bellunensis, Hieroglyphica, Leiden, 1626, p. 632. Monica Centanni, Elisabetta Gonzaga come Danae nella medaglia di Adriano Fiorentino (1495), in La Rivista di Engramma, 106, 2013 (online). Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) dedicated an eulogy to them - De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio et Elisabetha Gonzaga Urbini Ducibus - in which he revealed in detail Elisabetta’s unhappiness due to infertility. In the eulogy Bembo calles Elisabetta “a golden virgin”, like Danaë; Monica Centanni, o.c., (online). For more on the rich tradition of the fickleness of fate in the Quattrocento; See: Philine Helas, Fortuna-Occasio. Eine Bildprägung des Quattrocento zwischen ephemerer und ewiger Kunst, in StädelJahrbuch, 17, 1999, p. 101-124; Barbara Baert, Afterlife Studies and the Occasio Grisaille in Mantua (School of Mantegna, 1495-1510), in Ikon, 13, 2020, p. 95-108; Barbara Baert, From Kairos to Occasio along Fortuna. Text / Image / Afterlife. On the Antique Critical Moment, a Grisaille in Mantua (School of Mantegna, 1495-1510)

introduction and the Fortunes of Aby Warburg (1866-1929), Turnhout, 2021. 20 Eric Jan Sluijter, o.c., p. 4-45. 21 Maryan W. Ainsworth (ed.), Jan Gossart. 35. Danae, in Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures. Jan Gossart’s Renaissance. The Complete Works, (exh. cat.), London New York, 2010, p. 232-235. 22 Many examples in: Eric Jan Sluijter, o.c., p. 4-45. 23 Baldine Saint Girons, Spatier, architecturer, penser, in Revue des Deux Mondes,

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2007, p. 128-138, p. 131: Freud traçait un programme de travail qu’il faudrait faire nôtre, quand il écrivait peu avant sa mort. La spatialité [Räumlichkeit] peut être la projection de l’appareil psychique. Aucune autre dérivation n’est plausible. À la place des conditions a priori de Kant de notre appareil psychique, la psyché est étendue, je ne sais rien de plus à ce sujet [weiss nichts davon]; Sigmund Freud, Résultats, idées, problèmes (1938), Paris, 1985.

2 A Story About Rain

 Rain is not merely a metaphor for life; it is lively, life defined in her own words as a restless activeness, a destructive-creative force-presence that does not coincide fully with any specific body. (Lowell Duckert, For All Waters)

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The story about Danaë thematizes penetration and impregnation through a hole in the tower’s roof. This particular window type is called oculus. The main historic base for an oculus is its use as a sundial. Although not a very conventional sundial, the hole in the roof does give varying shadows throughout the day, which can be calculated precisely to give human beings an idea of time. The oculus is also a source of light and rain in ways that windows cannot offer. This is very practical in the case of vegetation growing directly underneath the oculus or to simply give a simple architecture a natural touch. However, perhaps the most useful historic base for an oculus is its use as a ventilation system.24

In this chapter I will explore the deeper archetypes of rain, rain gods and fertilization. Like Mircea Eliade (1907-1987) and James G. Frazer (1854-1941) repeatedly showed in their prototypical studies: the desire for the vital-to-life rain has produced rituals, performances, and images that border on sympathetic magic, animism, and shamanism.25 Rain must be wrested from nature (gods) through supernatural means.26 In his Patterns in Comparative Religion, Eliade writes the following about the relationship between rain, moon cults, fertility, and rain gods: The rain – the storm’s God ‘sowing’ – fits in with the hierophany of the waters, which are the most important sphere the moon dominates. Everything connected with fecundity belongs, more or less directly, to the immense orbit of MoonWaters-Woman-Earth. Sky divinities, by becoming ‘specialized’ into virile and generative divinities, became firmly bound up with these prehistoric patterns, and have remained there, either assimilating them into their own personalities, or becoming part of them.27

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Traditionally, humankind has had a special relationship with the atmospheric characteristics of their environment and with rain in particular. There are many different types of rain. In English we speak of rain in terms such as a light drizzle, a refreshing shower, or a destructive torrential downpour. The sensory experience of rain descending down from the heavens has inspired humans to create a range of symbolic depictions, which stretch between feelings of fear of its destructive powers and those of gratitude for its fertile watering.28 Rain irrigates the land and, as a result, is seen as a heavenly ‘ejaculation’.29 Psalm 72:6 sings of Solomon: “May the king’s rule be refreshing like spring rain on freshly cut grass, like the showers that water the earth.” And in China, yin, the female energy, is compared to the rain that must come together with the yang, the male energy.30 In her Rain. A Natural and Cultural History – a book about the different experiences and perceptions of rain – journalist Cynthia Barnett writes: Water alone is not enough. Water is ‘out there,’ too – in the atmosphere of Venus and in the polar caps of Mars – but it does not sustain a living world on either of those planets. To become our life force, water also had to build up in the skies, move along with the wind, and pour back to the surface, replenishing the waters, lands, and beings again and again.31

Rain has an epiphanic character. It is a sign from above. Like Hosea 6:3 prophesies: “He shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.” And when Noah came out of his ark, God created a rainbow over the new world as a sign of his covenant to never again ravage humankind through such destructive floods (Gen 8:2; Gen 9:12-16).32 Because rain is part of the atmospheric feelings space, it also mirrors people’s inner moods. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) writes that rain shapes the vital power of the soul.33 Thanks to this power, the soul does not dry out, and, in turn, it preserves the capacity to inspire us.34 Rain is also associated with tears.35 When we cry, we essentially overflow. Like a repentant Mary Magdalene, we can emotionally express and cleanse ourselves through our tears.36 Rain and rain gods are associated with high mountaintops. They are signs of the creating ancient mother goddess.37 The Indian deva Indra is the god of rain

a story about rain

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Fig. 9. The Black Stone of Paphos, venerated as Aphrodite, example of so-called Argoi lithoi or baitulia: meteorites considered as divine acheiropoietoi, Late Bronze Age, black basalt. Cyprus, Kouklia, Sanctuary of Aphrodite

and lighting. He lives on Mount Meru. His attribute is the bull or bull’s horns. This bull is governed by the female moon.38 Meteorites that fall down from the universe are seen as ‘moon rain’ and objects of fertility. Also in Antiquity these black stones are honoured in the form of goddesses. The stone of Paphos was venerated as Aphrodite (fig. 9).39

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Mircea Eliade writes: A close analysis of innumerable ‘rain stones’ has always brought to light the existence of a ‘theory’ to explain their power of governing the clouds; it is something to do either with their shape, which has some ‘sympathy’ with the clouds or with lightning, or with their celestial origin (they must have fallen from heaven), or with their belonging to ‘ancestors’; or perhaps they were found in water, or their shapes recall snakes, frogs, fishes or some other water emblem. The power of these stones never originates in themselves; they share in a principle, or embody a symbol, they express a cosmic ‘sympathy’ or betray a heavenly origin. These stones are signs of a spiritual reality beyond themselves, or the instruments of a sacred power of which they are merely containers.40

Rain and rain gods are also associated with caves, where the cave’s ceiling mirrors the expanse of the heavens. We still find signs that rain, rocks, and mountains were worshipped in Christian times, where saints have replaced these locations: the so-called santi pluvialis such as Severinus and Guido.41 The German Frau Holle, or Mother Holle, was also originally a rain goddess. When she shook the cushion in the underworld – the cave – it snows.42 And when she came to the upper world, the gate was opened and there were golden rain showers.43 Depictions of rain in their most ancient form can be found in prehistoric cave drawings and on neolithic pottery. This not only proves that the fascination with rain and its depiction has always guided humankind, but also reveals humans’ ability to combine imagery and fascination to create abstract symbols, icons, graphemes, etcetera. How can one depict rain, a phenomenon that is so dynamic, yet at the same time practically invisible? Recurrent patterns are the wavy line, the zigzag, and the hatch marks. As soon as these patterns become visible and tangible in the world, they compound related symbols – lightning, snake, teeth (or comb), (rain)bow – and connect these to one another. Below are some examples of these connections. The Mexican rain god Tlaloc is a lightning god – he controls the ‘rain’ of fire – and wears clothing with jagged edges and is depicted with the teeth of his upper jaw visible (fig. 10).44 Even now, there is the folk belief that the rainbow

a story about rain

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Fig. 10. Tlaloc, God of the Rain, Thunder, Earthquakes, Codex Borgia, 1519-21, Painted animal skins, 27 cm × 27 cm. Pre-Spanish conquest of Mexico, Southern Puebla. From: Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, Dictionnaire des Symboles, Paris, 1982, p. 765-767.

prevents a new downpour.45 The rainbow is a large snake that stretches across the sky and stops the water. In the Iliad, Homer (8th century BC) compares the serpent on Agamemnon’s shield to a rainbow.46 The Aboriginal peoples, conversely, believed that the cosmic snake spits on the heavens until a rainbow appears and the raindrops can start to fall.47 Rain and rainbows are opposite forces that charge or curtail one another.48 The rainbow ‘drinks’ or sucks the water out of the earth and turns it into rain. In the Metamorphoses by Publius Ovid (43 BC-17) it reads: “Then Iris [rainbow], Juno’s messenger, dressed in the colours of the rainbow, gathers water and feeds it back to the clouds (1.270-1).”49 In Hebrew,

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the word for rainbow - queshet - has the same root as archer: arrows are associated with streaks of rain.50 Formal families of mythical symbols thus contaminate one another. The streak of rain is a snake, lightning, a row of teeth, and so forth. Thomas Munro (18971974) writes about this phenomenon in his Suggestion and Symbolism in the Arts: Any image may become a symbol of its analogue; of that to which it is considered similar; also of the quality they have in common. This is mimetic or analogic symbolism. An abstract idea as such cannot be a symbol: some sensory image (presented or imagined) must symbolize it. Thus, the owl or serpent symbolizes wisdom. A word, as a visual or auditory image, can also be a symbol. In ancient mythology, the sky was compared to a father, fertilizing the earth through rain and sun; the earth to a mother, bringing forth plants and nourishing animals. Gardens, valleys, and soft foliage are regarded as feminine, especially when walled in, protected and protecting.51

a story about rain Zeyna Sanjania, The Significance of the Oculus in Architecture, (unpublished essay at Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College), Leicester, 2010, p. 10. 25 Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, New York, 1958; James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough. The Roots of Religion and Folklore, Oxford, 2009. Mircea Eliade was later contested due to the Nazi sympathies of the author; Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism. The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, Oxford, 1991, p.104-105, p. 110-111, p. 120-126, p. 134. 26 This part is borrowed from: Barbara Baert, Looking Into the Rain. MagicMoisture-Medium, Berlin, 2021 (at press). 27 Mircea Eliade, o.c., p. 93. 28 Manfred Lurker, art. Regen, in Wörterbuch der Symbolik, Stuttgart, 1991, p. 608. 29 Richard Broxton Onians, The Origin of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate, Cambridge, 1988, p. 230, p. 288-289. 30 Michel Cazenave (ed.), Encyclopédie des symboles, Paris, 1996, p. 538-540. 31 Cynthia Barnett, Rain. A Natural and Cultural History, New York, 2015, p. 15. 32 John C.J. Metford, Rainbow, in Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend, London, 1983, p. 209. 33 Michel Cazenave (ed.), o.c., p. 538-540. 34 Michel Cazenave (ed.), o.c., p. 538. 35 Joseph Imorde, Dulciores sunt lacrimae orantium, quam gaudia theatrorum. Zum Wechselverhältnis von Kunst und Religion um 1600, in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 63, 1, 2000, p. 1-14. 36 Barbara Baert, Interruptions & Transitions. Essays on the Senses in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture, (Art and Material Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 14), Leiden, 2018, p. 73-130; For further reading: Piroska Nagy, Le don des larmes aux Moyen Âge, Paris, 2000, passim. 37 Carl Henrik Andreas Bjerregaard, The Great Mother. A Gospel of the Eternally Feminine. Occult and Scientific Studies and 24

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Experiences in the Sacred and Secret Life, New York, 1913, p. 19. Mircea Eliade, o.c., p. 87. Mircea Eliade, o.c., p. 226-229. Mircea Eliade, o.c., p. 226-227. Viktor Stegemann, art. Regen, in Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, Bd. 1, Berlin-Leipzig, 1935-1936, cols. 577-586, col. 578. James P. Mallory & Douglas Q. Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-IndoEuropean and the Proto-Indo European World, Oxford, 2006, p. 125-128: Ch. 8.3, Table p. 125: Multiple words for water/ rain: suh- (rain); hwers- (dew); nbh(ro/ri) (torrential rain, flood); dhreg (rains, snow). Viktor Stegemann, o.c., col. 579. Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, Dictionnaire des Symboles, Paris, 1982, p. 765-767. - Those struck by lighting and storm will stay with the sun god for four years, a unique privilege. But after that period, they become a hummingbird. In the most recent novel by Sandro Veronesi (°1959), Luisa, Marco’s great love, writes in a letter to him: E oggi che tutta la civiltà azteca è sprofondata in Mictlan, ancora ci chiediamo che razza di popolo fosse quello la cui massima soddisfazione dopo una morte eroica era diventare un colibrì; Sandro Veronesi, Il colibrì, Milan, 2019, p. 117. Raphael Patai, On Jewish Folklore, Detroit-Michigan, 2018, p. 72-73. Homer, Iliad Books 13-24 (Loeb Classical Library, 171), ed. William F. Wyatt & transl. Augustus T. Murray, Cambridge (MA)-London, 1999: A, 24. Raphael Patai, o.c., p. 73. Raphael Patai, o.c., p. 75. Publius Ovid, o.c,, http://www.gleeditions.com/metamorphoses/students/toc. asp?lid=108; Last accessed 12 February 2021. Raphael Patai, o.c, p. 76. Thomas Munro, Suggestion and Symbolism in the Arts, in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 15, 2, 1956, p. 152-180, p. 156.

3 A Story About Gold and the Sea

 It’s the stars that are imprisoned in their own power, and they cannot really help us. They merely design the nets, and on cosmic looms they weave the warp thread that we must complete with our own weft. (Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead)

T

The myth of Danaë answers to the archetypical spectrum of rain symbolism. There is an evident association with fertility. The body of Danaë is moistened and through this impregnation, new life is possible. Here, Zeus acts as an ancient rain god.52 Rain gods generally have the power of thunder and lightning as well. Thunderstorms bring both rain and lightning with them. The streaks of rain coming down from the skies are associated with fiery bolts of lightning. These gold flashes of light form eruptions from the universe. This association was kept alive particularly within the Native American Pueblo and Hopi tribes, as seen in the compelling research by Aby Warburg (1866-1929).53 Warburg learned that these were based on dance rituals that expressed both the fear of lightning as well as the desire for fertile rain.

As the supreme god of light and the heavens, Zeus also carries the sun. Light is his medium. Zeus transforming from sun into rain also conjures up the element of the most noble, glowing metal of all: gold. The Greek poet Pindar (522-443 BC) writes: “[Perseus] that son of Danaë (…) he who, men tell, was from a flowing stream of gold begotten.”54 Hindu culture still relates gold to seed. And the above mentioned deva Indra exclusively fertilizes when there is rain and lightning abound. The Germanic peoples say Thor’s hammer of lightning and thunder is kept in the lap of a bride.55 And aren’t the heavens with their meteorites and clashing stars only visible for humans when their cosmic windows split through the opaque darkness? In reference to that, David Rosen has an interesting hypothesis.56 Since Ancient times, there has been a meteor shower named Perseids (after Danaë’s son Perseus), which shoots past the earth as a golden rain every summer. The connections between sun, gold, fire, and rain thus also belong to the cosmological spectrum. And finally, the precious metal gold is seen as a form of payment in ancient cultures. On Greek pottery, the rainfall that reaches Danaë is often depicted as golden coins (fig. 11).57 Over time, the motif has split

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Fig. 11. Danae and the Golden Shower, 5th century BC, Lucanian red-figure krater. Paris, Musée du Louvre

off to mean a payment for sex which is so high that even the most chaste woman would relent. Paulus Silentiarius (died 580 AD) wrote the following: Zeus, turned to gold, piercing the brazen chamber of Danae, cut the knot of intact virginity. I think the meaning of the story is this. Gold, the subduer of all things, gets the better of brazen walls and fetters; gold loosens all reins and opens every lock, gold makes the ladies with scornful eyes bend the knee. It was gold that bent the will of Danae. No need for a lover to pray to Aphrodite, if he brings money to offer.58

The second component on the spectrum is the archetype of the enclosed space. According to the sources, Danaë is locked up in a bronze tower. She’s held hostage in what is thought of as an impenetrable bastion, in a mausoleum, which creates an arc of tension with Zeus’ devious way of still reaching Danaë. His transformation into this peculiar ejaculation happens when passing through

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a multifunctional ventilation hole: the oculus that also allowed one to see what time it was by the position of the sun. Zeus reaches Danaë as liquid sunlight from the gaping mouth of dark oblivion. Marianne Nichols mentions an interesting line of thought.59 The author compares locations from Greek mythology with archaeological discoveries from that era. She recognizes characteristics from the grave cult in the description of Danaë’s tower. In his Description of Greece, the Greek writer and traveler Pausanias (c. 110 - c. 180) writes: “The Argives have other things worth seeing [in their town]; for instance, an underground building over which was the bronze chamber which Akrisios (Acrisius) once made to guard his daughter. Perilaus [historical], however, when he became tyrant, pulled it down.”60 Danaë’s tower is thus possibly connected with tumuli, with the spaces above and/or below, with tombs, and therefore with the themes of life, death, and resurrection. The slender opening towards the dark cave/tower also evokes the narrow entrance for the phallus towards the matriarchal underworld and womb. Both the space below (crypt, grotto) as well as the space above – summit, tumulus, tower, mountain – is the place where the mother goddess retreats: close to water, to rain, to vapor and moisture. The cave is a reference to the female sex.61 Together with the role of the water, the hidden dark and black life force from within, the cave indisputably has uterine connotations.62 The Babylonian mother-goddess Nintu lives in the mountain and embodies fertility and regeneration.63 Subterranean springs and rivers function as the amniotic waterways of the earth. Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) reflects on this archetypical function of the cave: La grotte ne quittera jamais son rang d’image fondamentale. C’est le coin du monde dit Loti, auquel je reste le plus fidèlement attaché, après en avoir aimé tant d’autres; comme nulle part ailleurs, je m’y sens en paix, je m’y sens rafraîchi, retrempé de prime jeunesse et de vie neuve.64 In his Die grosse Mutter, Erich Neumann points out that there is an etymological connection between the German Burg and castle. Besides the tower, the Burg is also a cave or a mountain, and both offer protection or captivity.65 Burg is Hohle (cave); hohl (hole) and connected to Halle (a hal), even Helm (helm) from the root hel (shelter, protection). The mother goddess protects and lives in the Berg of sich bergen, verbergen, finding shelter in Geborgenkeit.66

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Here we certainly reach the chthonic depths of the Danaë myth. Chthonic forces were, from time immemorial, venerated in hollow fire altars dug into the soil. These fire mounds were among the manifold manifestations of the Goddess and of the subterranean powers or abyssal energies associated with her. The Goddess is mistress of the most formidable aspects of nature (volcanoes, fire, eruptions) but at the same time, of the control over them (snow, soothing). The god mother stores a tension of extremes in herself: massive mountain and unfathomable cavity/depth, devastating fire and lenient snow. She dominates and unites opposite energies. The whiteness (of the snow) itself is also an (abstract) image of femininity.67

The third and final component in the spectrum brings us to the story after the impregnation. Danaë and little Perseus are put into a chest and tossed out at sea (fig. 12).68 The chest is basically the second grave in the myth. But fishermen catch the chest in their nets. We know of the satyr play by Aeschylus (456-523 BC) that was part of his Perseus trilogy – the Satyr Net-Draggers (Diktyoulkoi) – which described the arrival of the chest containing Danaë and her infant son Perseus on the island of Seriphos. Diktys: “What gift of the sea does your net conceal? It’s covered with seaweed like. Is it some warm-blooded creature? Or has the Old Man of the Islands [Nereus or Proteus] sent us something in a chest? How tremendously heavy it is! The work’s not going ahead! I’ll shout and raise an alarm. Hallo there! Farmers and ditchers, this way, all of you! Herdsmen and shepherds, anyone in the place! Coastal folk and all you other toilers of the sea (Fragment 274)!”69

In this part of the myth we find a particular series of connections between the chest, the net/membrane, and the (primordial) sea. The etymology of the word chest is remarkable in that context (fig. 13).70 Martin Bernal (1937-2013) sets off from the Greek word complex connected to kálathos or the typical basket with a thinner end and open, chalice-like opening.71 Kálathos also means recipient, chest, suitcase, capital, and pillar. Even further

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Fig. 12. Danae and Perseus at sea in the chest, 5th century BC, Athenian red-figure lekythos. Rhode Island, School of Design Museum

Fig. 13. Acrisius, Danae and infant Perseus, 5th century BC, Athenian red-figure hydria. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts

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back, in its Indo-European roots, there is a connection between twirling, spinning, as well as with