Diana and Callisto

The story is a cruel one. Diana, goddess of the hunt, has just discovered that Callisto, one of the nymphs sworn to serve her, is carrying Jupiter's child, and here she casts her out of the band. Ricci painted this small canvas in Venice between 1712 and 1716, handling an old subject from Ovid with a light, quick brush. What became of the picture afterward is the stranger tale. By the Second World War it had passed from a collection in Wiesbaden, through Rome, into the wartime holdings of Hermann Göring, the Nazi leader and compulsive art collector. In 1948 it was tracked down and returned to Italy by Rodolfo Siviero, the official who spent decades recovering works looted during the war. It reached the Gallerie dell'Accademia only in 1988, and hangs today in room eight.