Diana and Actaeon

By the 1730s, French painters had taken the old classical myths down from the church wall and the palace ceiling and set them, warm and close, in the cabinets of private collectors. De Troy made this in 1734 for exactly that kind of room. The story comes from Ovid: the hunter Actaeon, out with his dogs, wanders into a clearing and finds the goddess Diana bathing with her nymphs. She is the calm center here, marked by the leopard skin and the small crescent moon at her brow, while the women around her twist away in alarm. For his intrusion Diana splashes him with water and turns him into a stag, and at the left you can see him already fleeing, antlers on his head, as four of his own hounds close on him. The next year de Troy painted a companion piece, the Abduction of Proserpina, another scene from Ovid with a woman at the center of sudden violence. The two canvases were made as a pair. That second one now hangs in Saint Petersburg, at the Hermitage.