Portraits aren’t always flattering—especially “poison-pen” paintings like this one. It was intended purely, and ingeniously, to damage Mademoiselle Lange’s reputation. For most Parisians, it confirmed what they already suspected: Miss Anne-Françoise-Élisabeth Lange was a talented actress known as much for her wealthy lovers as her beauty. Girodet painted her portrait, but she found his first effort unflattering and offered just half his asking price. Enraged, Girodet got revenge with this second, satirical version, complete with symbolic details that scathingly hint at her true character.
Artists in the 1800s sometimes portrayed people as heroic mythological characters. But Girodet inverted this convention to defame Miss Lange. Danaë was a mortal loved by the Greek god Zeus, who transformed himself into a shower of gold to fall upon her. Here, Girodet shows Miss Lange in the guise of Danaë, greedily catching the gold coins in a swath of blue drapery.
Lange is staged as a naked, grasping woman of loose morals. She is minimally adorned with peacock feathers, and sits on a coarse blanket spread over a shaky bed steadied with a brick. Quite an insulting stage and costume for such a well-known actress.
Lange holds a broken mirror, suggesting her inability to see herself as Girodet saw her—a vain, adulterous, and greedy woman.
The turkey may symbolize Lange’s husband (note the wedding ring on its toe), right down to the resemblance. Turkeys have traditionally been associated with stupidity and vanity, and Girodet emphasized the latter by showing the turkey’s feathers being replaced with a vain peacock’s. This, too, has a double meaning: peacocks traditionally symbolized a cuckold, the husband of an unfaithful wife.
One white dove lies dead, killed by a coin from the shower of gold; its collar is inscribed Fidelitas (Fidelity). Another dove, inscribed Constantia (Constancy), has broken its bond. Both suggest a lack of faithfulness and constancy in Lange’s marital life.
The Cupid-like figure helping Lange/Danäe gather coins is the actress’s illegitimate daughter, Palmyre. She wears a fashionable headdress adorned with peacock feathers and the same earrings as Lange. The coins she’s collecting is a reference to the 200,000 livres (about $800,000 today) given by her absent father for her education.
The mask with a coin for an eye sits below Lange’s bed like a discarded trophy. But whose? It’s an allusion to one of Lange’s lovers, Leuthrop Beauregard, rumored to have paid 10,000 livres ($40,000 today) for 12 hours of the actress’s affection. Beauregard’s greedy and lewd character is indicated by the coin blocking his vision and the satyr-like face, licking his lips.
Behind Lange’s left arm is a small statue of Abundance, a kind of household divinity and the patron goddess of Lange. A votive candle before the statue has drawn a mouse and numerous moths—representing the actress's admirers—to its flame.