Danaë

This newly discovered, exquisite little copper panel is a late work from König's artistic maturity, dated by Gode Krämer to circa 1630 (private correspondence, Febraury 2020).
Best known for his small cabinet paintings of historical and mythological themes, König had already spent several years in Italy before he arrived in Rome in 1610, where he may have encountered Adam Elsheimer before his death on 11 December 1610, as evidenced by König's early work. Indeed, paintings such as the artist's Landscape with Saint John the Baptist (sold Sotheby's, London, 8 December 2004, lot 39) indicate that he must have been well acquainted with works by the master. In particular, König emulated Elsheimer’s treatment of landscapes, almost as a genre in its own right, with superb attention to detail, capturing the evocative effects of light on the foliage and the surroundings. He also encountered the landscapes of Paul Bril and the early paintings of Carlo Saraceni.
König’s copy of Veronese's Marriage at Cana was painted in Venice as early as 1607, suggesting that he had probably arrived in the city in circa 1606-7. The artist often adopted motifs from Venetian painting, as demonstrated in his Toilet of Bathsheba (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), whose figures derive from Tintoretto’s Susanna in her Bath (Musée du Louvre, Paris), with the architectural background inspired by Veronese. The artist must have visited Venice and studied the work of the great Venetian masters, where it is documented that he made a miniature copy (untraced) of Veronese’s Marriage at Cana (Musée du Louvre, Paris) in circa 1608. In 1614 he returned to Augsburg, where he became Dean of the Painter’s Guild in 1622 and in the following year was elected to the Greater Council of the City.
We are grateful to Gode Krämer for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs.