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The Louvre preempts three tapestries
13/10/23 - Acquisitions - Paris, Musée du Louvre - There is the charming detail of the squirting water in the centre of the composition: Diana splashes Actaeon to repel him (ill. 1). This reaction is well and truly specified by Ovid. The author of the Metamorphoses tells us that the goddess, surprised by the hunter as she was bathing, blushed to see herself thus exposed without veil to the gaze of a mortal and, finding herself without her bow, threw "a wave of vengeance" at Actaeon’s forehead, while her companions hurriedly surrounded her to hide her nakedness.
This furious, vain gesture is rarely depicted by artists, who prefer to convey more explicit modesty or fury, showing the goddess anxious to hide her body or already determined to punish the hunter and turn him into a stag; he…
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