Beschreibung:

A Continental sculpted limestone model of the Diane Chasseresse group, 20th century, after the Antique, portrayed with head turned to dexter, her right hand lifted to take an arrow from her quiver, above loose drapery, a deer leaping out to her left, on an integral rectangular socle, 183cm high; on a rectangular plinth with fluted sides and moulded base, 98cm high, 97cm long, 82cm wide, the height overall 281cm The Diane Chasseresse, (also known as Diana à la Biche, Diana of Versailles, Artemis of the Chase, and Artemis with the Hind) is a slightly over lifesize sculpted marble statue of the Greek goddess Artemis (Latin: Diana), with a deer, located in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. It is thought to be a Roman copy (1st or 2nd century AD) of a lost Greek bronze original attributed to Leochares, circa 325 BC. The statue was discovered in Italy, possibly either at the sanctuary at Nemi or at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli. In 1556 it was given by Pope Paul IV to Henry II of France, with a subtle but inescapable allusion to the king's mistress, Diane de Poitiers. It was installed as the central feature of the Jardin de la Reine laid out west of the Galerie des Cerfs at Fontainebleau; there it was the most prominently displayed and among the first Roman sculptures to be seen in France Haskell and Penny state that: "Alone amongst the statues exported from Italy before the second half of the seventeenth century the Diane Chasseresse acquired a reputation outside Italy equivalent to the masterpieces in the Belvedere or the Villa Borghese" Taste and the Antique: the Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900, Yale University Press, 1981, p196.