The story of Danaë is told in Ovid’s 'Metamorphoses' (IV, 697–698). Her father, Acrisius, King of Argos, fearful of his prophesied death at the hands of a future grandson, imprisoned Danaë in a bronze tower to keep her suitors away. Jupiter, however, visited her in a shower of golden rain, and the outcome of their union was the hero Perseus, who did indeed kill his grandfather, albeit accidentally, with a discus. Here the princess is shown reclining on cushions in an interior pervaded by the golden light of Jupiter. The composition recurs in a Boucher drawing (last recorded in the Rodrigues sale, Paris, 28 November 1928), and in a miniature by Charlier (M139) in The Wallace Collection, which suggests that all three works derive from a lost original by Boucher.