Diana Leaning on a Stag, known as the Diana of Anet
Unknown · 1540-1560
A nude goddess reclines against a great stag, one arm draped over its neck and a bow in her other hand, while hunting dogs sit at her side. She is Diana, goddess of the hunt, but everyone at the French court would have seen her as Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of King Henry the Second, whose chateau at Anet this group adorned. The elongated body, small head and cool elegance are the hallmarks of the Fontainebleau style of the mid sixteenth century. The group is over two and a half metres wide and was carved to crown a fountain, so imagine water playing around the marble. It was long given to Jean Goujon, but the museum now leaves the sculptor anonymous.
The fountain stood first in the rear courtyard of Anet, built from 1547 by Philibert Delorme, then in an eighteenth-century nymphaeum. Seized at the Revolution, it was withheld from the sale of the chateau's contents in 1794 and assigned to the Museum of French Monuments in 1796, though the Duke of Orleans's widow resisted its removal and Alexandre Lenoir had to claim it in 1797. It reached the Louvre on 5 April 1819.
Did You Know? The naked goddess is a flattering portrait of the king's mistress, who happened to share the name Diane.
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