Correggio's masterpiece, Danäe, depicts one of the four stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses about the loves of Jupiter, commissioned in around 1531 by Frederick II Gonzaga in Mantua as a present for Charles V (the other scenes are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and the National Gallery, London).

Jupiter, transformed into a golden shower, is received by Cupid and Danäe, while heavenly and earthly love test the metal of the point of love's arrow with a goldsmith stone.

Correggio, a sophisticated naturalist painter at the time of Mannerism, has always been celebrated for the subtle shades, and imperceptible changes of tone he created by using subtle glazing. the picture's soft sensuality fascinated many European courts, in fact, it had a number of different owners and travelled to Madrid (1532), Milan (1584), Prague (1621), Stockholm (1652), Rome (1654), Paris (1721), Brussels (1792), England (1789), Paris (beginning of the nineteenth century) and Rome (1827). The works' Odissey of journeys and restoration work expains the gaps in the pictorial surface and the loss of glazing, though its former splendour can still be appreciated.