Diana disarming Cupid: Elizabeth Dashwood, Duchess of Manchester (1741-1832) and her Son George Montagu, Viscount Manderville (1763 – 1772)

Reynolds's Diana Disarming Cupid from 1769 represents his most systematic application of the 'portrait historié' — the practice of depicting living individuals in the roles of mythological or allegorical figures. Elizabeth Dashwood, Duchess of Manchester, appears as Diana the huntress, while her infant son George Montagu takes the role of the disarmed Cupid whose arrows the goddess is appropriating. The conceit had a distinguished precedent in European court portraiture, where aristocratic women had been depicted as Diana since at least the sixteenth century; Reynolds revived and theorized this tradition through the argument in his Discourses that portraiture could achieve the dignity of history painting when elevated by allegorical reference. The composition's direct sources include Titian's Diana paintings and the numerous Italian treatments of the goddess that Reynolds had studied during his Italian years. The infant son who served as Cupid died in 1772 at age nine, making this portrait a poignant record of the family before that loss. Now in a National Trust property, the painting demonstrates Reynolds's ability to transform a fashionable commission into a composition with the intellectual weight of a mythological painting.

Reynolds's handling is broad and confident, the flesh tones warm and luminous despite the known issues with his experimental pigments. The goddess's drapery is loosely painted to suggest classical sculpture while the landscape background is atmospheric and suggestive. The compositional interplay between mother bending forward and child reaching up creates dynamic energy.