Diana of Gabii
Unknown (Roman, after a type linked to Praxiteles) (Praxiteles active c. 375-335 BC) · Roman imperial period
A young goddess pauses to fasten her cloak at the right shoulder, raising both hands to the clasp, her head turned as if her attention has been caught. She wears a short chiton with a double belt and sandals, the dress of a huntress, and her wavy hair is drawn back into a bun tied with a ribbon. The short dress and the tree trunk support identify her as Artemis, Diana to the Romans, goddess of the hunt, though she carries no bow. The gesture is disarmingly ordinary: a divinity caught dressing, in the instant before she steps out.
The statue is carved in Parian marble, and its surface, especially in the folds of the chiton over the belt, shows the softness that Roman copyists reserved for their best work. The figure was broken at the knees and rejoined, and the head and several parts of the arms were reattached; the nose, the fingers of the right hand with the edge of the cloak, the left calf and foot and the lower hems are restorations. Notice how the lifted arms open the composition and how the cloak, still half folded, hangs in a tight roll of pleats against the smooth flesh of the arm.
The statue was found in 1792 at Gabii, east of Rome, during the excavations that Gavin Hamilton conducted for Prince Borghese, and it came to the Louvre in 1807 with the rest of the Borghese collection. It was carved in Italy in the Roman imperial period after a Greek original, and many scholars have linked that original to the Artemis Brauronia that Praxiteles made for the Acropolis in Athens around three hundred and forty six BC, where dedications of clothing to the goddess were recorded in inventories. The attribution remains a hypothesis, but the elegance of the pose, with its long diagonal from the raised elbow to the trailing foot, is fully in the spirit of Praxiteles.
Did You Know? The goddess is doing something no other famous statue of Artemis does: simply getting dressed, pinning her cloak at the shoulder.
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