Changing Paintings: 11 Actaeon changed into a stag

In his Metamorphoses, Ovid starts his summary of the Theban cycle by telling the legend of how the city of Thebes came to be founded by Cadmus with five men who sprung from dragon’s teeth. That leads on to an account of the tragic fate of Cadmus’ grandson Actaeon. Ovid prefaces this with a brief summary in which he draws a parallel with his own banishment by the Emperor Augustus, maintaining that, like Actaeon, he shouldn’t be punished for his misfortune.

Thebes is now a city, and Actaeon is out hunting. Having enjoyed success earlier in the day, he calls on his companions to halt as it grows hot. Unknown to Actaeon, Diana, the virgin goddess of the hunt, has a sacred wood nearby, in which she too had become tired after her morning of hunting. She had just reached a cave with her favourite pool where her companion nymphs could help her bathe.

Unaware, Actaeon enters the wood and, misguided by the Fates, stumbles across the naked Diana in her pool.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Diana and Actaeon (1895), oil on canvas, 64.2 x 100.3 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Diana and Actaeon (1895) is perhaps the most unusual painted account of this story, with which the artist would have been very familiar. Diana and her court are bathing in a lake, but descending on them from the top of a hillock on the left is a contemporary hunt in close pursuit of a stag, which has just entered the water and is heading rapidly towards the alarmed women.

Jules LeFebvre (1834–1912), Diana Surprised (1879), oil on canvas, 279 x 371.5 cm, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Wikimedia Commons.

Jules LeFebvre’s large canvas of Diana Surprised (1879) shows only the naked goddess and her attendants, who are taken aback by something beyond the left edge of the canvas. At the far right is a dead deer on the ground, an explicit clue to its conclusion.

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), The Summer – Diana Surprised by Actaeon (1856-63), oil on canvas, 194 × 165 cm, São Paulo Museum of Art, São Paulo, Brazil. Wikimedia Commons.

At the end of his career, Eugène Delacroix was commissioned by the Alsacian industrialist Frederick Hartmann to paint him four allegorical paintings of the seasons in which they are personified in characters from classical mythology. The Summer – Diana Surprised by Actaeon (1856-63) is a faithful account of Ovid’s story. Actaeon has just arrived from the right, accompanied by the dogs who would shortly turn on him. He faces Diana, marked out by the crescent moon on her diadem, as her attendant nymphs make haste to cover her body. Already antlers are growing from his head.

The nymphs take fright and gather around the goddess, but Diana stands head and shoulders above them. Wishing that her hunting bow was to hand, Diana splashes water at Actaeon as she first threatens him for seeing her naked, then transforms him into a great stag.

Martin Johann Schmidt (1718–1801), Diana and Actaeon (1785), oil on copper plate, 55 × 77 cm, Narodna galerija Slovenije, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Wikimedia Commons.

Martin Johann Schmidt captures the splashed water in mid-flight in his Diana and Actaeon of 1785, and is one of the few artists to have heeded Ovid’s description of Diana’s great stature in comparison with the nymphs. Another detail he depicts well is the nymph who is standing in front of Diana to shield her body from Actaeon’s sight.

Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1600), Diana and Actaeon (1597), distemper and gold on vellum mounted on panel, 22 x 33.9 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Joris Hoefnagel’s Diana and Actaeon (1597), finely executed in distemper and gold on vellum, shows Diana crouching low over the water and splashing the approaching Actaeon with water, scooped up by her left hand.

Giuseppe Cesari (1568–1640), Diana and Actaeon (1602-03), oil on copper, 50 × 69 cm, Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary. Wikimedia Commons.

In Giuseppe Cesari’s almost contemporary Diana and Actaeon (1602-03), Diana and her nymphs don’t look as shocked and alarmed as they should, but Actaeon’s hounds are already getting ready to pick a fight with him, as if they can tell what those growing antlers mean.

Actaeon flees. As he stands wondering what to do, his own hunting dogs catch up with him. Ovid lists them to paint the scene in fullest detail, as the dogs attack the unfortunate Actaeon and inflict wound after wound. His companions see the dogs’ success in attacking their quarry, and call in vain to him as he lies dying.

Zygmunt Waliszewski (1897-1936), Diana and Actaeon (1935), further details not know. Image by Ablakok, via Wikimedia Commons.

Zygmunt Waliszewski painted Diana and Actaeon in 1935, shortly before his sudden and premature death. He shows a slightly later moment in time, as Actaeon’s hounds have started to attack the stag. Diana bears her crescent moon, and appears to be about to take aim with her bow and an arrow she is drawing from the quiver on her back.

Titian’s two superb paintings of this story were both intended for King Philip II of Spain, who commissioned him to paint a series of six works based on classical mythology. The paintings he delivered include those of Danae (1549-50), Venus and Adonis (1552-54), Perseus and Andromeda (1554-56), Diana and Actaeon (1556-59), and the Rape of Europa (1559-62), shown here a couple of articles ago. Although a fine work, that of Diana and Actaeon (1556-59) was more about Diana and her companions, and less about the story.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (c 1490–1576), The Death of Actaeon (c 1559-75), oil on canvas, 178.8 cm x 197.8 cm, The National Gallery (Bought with grants and public appeal, 1972), London. Photo © The National Gallery, London.

Between about 1559-75, Titian also painted The Death of Actaeon, completing it shortly before his own death. Actaeon’s transformation is here incomplete, and he’s shown as a man with a stag’s head. Nevertheless, his dogs are attacking him, and his death is inevitable. For some unaccountable reason, Diana is shown largely if rather loosely dressed, having just loosed an arrow at Actaeon, as if she had second thoughts and wished to hasten his death.

For me, the greatest painting of the tragedy of Actaeon, and the most complete by far, is Camille Corot’s multiplex narrative from 1836.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875), Diana and Actaeon (1836), oil on canvas, 156.5 × 112.7 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Corot’s Diana and Actaeon captures the earliest moment, and is, in a subtle way, by far the bravest. For a couple of centuries after multiplex narrative fell into disfavour, Corot uses it to great effect. He also achieves a perfect balance between his marvellous woodland landscape, of which Ovid would have been proud, and the figures.

Most prominent are those of Diana and her attendant nymphs, who are behaving like real people for once, climbing a branch bent over the water, and soaking up the sunshine. At the right, Actaeon and one of his dogs are just about to run straight into them. Diana, appropriately crowned, stands pointing to the distant figure at the left – which is again Actaeon, antlers growing from his head as she transforms him into a stag.

Ovid closes this tragic story with opinions of Diana’s vicious action, telling us that some felt it unjust, but others viewed it as proper defence of her virginity, an interesting contrast with his earlier accounts of Jupiter’s serial rapes.