The Diana of Versailles, also known as Diana the Huntress, Hunting Artemis or Diana with the deer. It is a marble statue of the Greek goddess Artemis, in Roman mythology, Diana, which is located in the Louvre Museum, in Paris.
It represents the goddess in motion, with the left hand on the antlers of a small deer and the right of it in her quiver. The statue is a little larger than life, she is two meters tall and it is a Roman copy belonging to the 1st or 2nd century from a Greek bronze original that was lost.
The goddess is represented as a slender and masculine hunter on the move, accompanied by a male deer, smaller than life size, full of vitality. She looks to the right, while with her right arm she takes an arrow from her quiver. You can see that her left hand is holding a bow, although part of it is missing. The disappearance of the weapon turns the image in a simple pastoral. The statue of Diana of Versailles was discovered in Italy. In the late 1550s, It was owned by Pope Paul IV and he gave it to Henry II of France, as a subtle but inevitable allusion to the king's mistress, Diana of Poitiers.
The statue was in the Palace of Fontainebleau. And later, Louis XIV of France installed the sculpture in the Gallery of Mirrors from the Palace of Versailles. Numerous copies are known related to the sculpture of Diana. The most curious one was exposed in the fireplace of the Great Hall of the Titanic.
