Diana

Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Pena's Diana, painted in 1849, depicts the classical goddess of the hunt in a forest setting. Diaz, one of the principal painters of the Barbizon school, combined landscape painting with mythological and Oriental subjects. His Diana reflects the persistence of classical mythology as a vehicle for depicting the female nude in French painting, while the forest setting draws on his Barbizon experience in the Forest of Fontainebleau.

Diaz's oil-on-canvas technique features the rich, warm palette and painterly freedom characteristic of the Barbizon school. The forest setting is rendered with the atmospheric, light-dappled effects he observed at Fontainebleau, while the figure of Diana is painted with a Romantic sensuousness.