Diana Resting

Millet's Diana Resting from around 1845 deploys mythological subject matter in a way consistent with his early career engagement with the academic figure tradition before his definitive shift to peasant subjects. Diana, goddess of the hunt, was a subject that allowed painters to combine the nude or semi-nude female figure with outdoor landscape in a way that was both academically respectable and commercially viable. Millet's treatment reflects his study of Flemish and French figure painting as well as the influence of academic mythology training under Delaroche, but the outdoor naturalist setting anticipates his later commitment to plein-air observation. The work belongs to the transitional period when Millet was balancing the demands of academic convention with his emerging naturalist vision, and before his identification with peasant subjects had made mythological subjects seem foreign to his artistic identity.

The reclining goddess is rendered with warm, golden flesh tones derived from Millet's study of Correggio and the Venetian painters. The idealized nude contrasts sharply with the earthbound physicality of his later peasant figures, though the same sensitivity to the human body is evident.