Diana the Huntress

Painted in 1928 on panel, this late work by Ettore Tito takes up the mythological subject of Diana, goddess of the hunt, moon, and chastity. Diana the Huntress was among the most frequently depicted mythological figures in the European tradition — from Titian and Cranach through Boucher and into the academic painting of the nineteenth century — because she permitted the depiction of an athletic, unclothed or partially clothed female figure whose nudity was sanctioned by classical precedent. By 1928, with Tito in his late sixties, the choice of this subject reflects a painter deeply rooted in the Italian figurative tradition returning to the canonical subjects of that tradition at the end of his career. The panel support, as in other works by Tito, suggests a more intimate or experimental format chosen deliberately rather than for economic reasons — by this date he had the resources and reputation to work however he chose. The mythological subject gave Tito the freedom to combine figure painting with landscape or atmospheric background, and to engage the long line of Italian and European interpretations of Diana that had accumulated over four centuries.

Panel at this scale and date would have been carefully prepared with ground and possibly sized before painting. The Diana subject typically demands a composition balancing the human figure against a natural setting — forest, moonlit sky, or open hillside — and Tito's mature handling would integrate these elements with practiced ease, using cool silvery tones to evoke the goddess's lunar associations.