Diane sortant du bain

Boucher showed this at the Paris Salon of 1742, at the height of the Rococo taste for small, private, sensuous pictures meant for a collector's cabinet rather than a grand wall. It shows the goddess Diana just out of her bath, resting with a nymph kneeling at her feet. You can pick her out by the little crescent-moon jewel in her hair, the sign of Diana, and nearby lie the bow and the dead game from her hunt. Boucher was less interested in the myth than in cool pale skin, water and silk, all rendered with a soft, decorative polish that made him the favourite painter of Madame de Pompadour. The Louvre acquired it in 1852.