Atalanta Receiving the Boar's Head from Meleager

By the 1560s Venetians could read Ovid in their own language. In 1553 the Venice printer Gabriele Giolito published Lodovico Dolce's Italian verse version of the Metamorphoses, and it went through several more editions. In his eighth book Ovid tells of the Calydonian boar, a monster Diana sent to ravage the countryside, and of the heroes who hunted it. The first to wound the beast was a woman, the huntress Atalanta, and when Meleager made the kill he gave her its head as the prize, much to the annoyance of the men.

Veronese sets that moment at the centre of a canvas a metre long and barely a quarter of a metre high. Atalanta, in a maroon dress, holds court in the middle, while Meleager, in sky blue, points to the boar's head held by a servant. The range of colour and the speaking gestures carry the eye along the whole strip. The museum notes that Veronese planned small pictures like this with the same care and the same expensive materials he used for his largest canvases.