Diana and Actaeon

Jacopo da Sellaio painted this scene of Diana and Actaeon around 1485, part of a series depicting episodes from Ovid's Metamorphoses for Florentine domestic decoration. The story of the hunter Actaeon discovering the goddess Diana bathing was one of the most popular Ovidian subjects in Renaissance art. Such mythological spalliere panels adorned the chambers of wealthy Florentine newlyweds. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting.

Tempera on panel in the horizontal format typical of spalliera panels. The woodland setting and the multiple figures are handled with the narrative liveliness characteristic of Florentine decorative painting.