アクタイオンの死

A goddess strides through a dark wood, bow raised, as a man half turned into a stag goes down under his own hounds. Titian worked on this canvas for years and never let it go.

The story behind the painting

This is probably one of two paintings Titian told Philip II of Spain, in a letter of June 1559, that he had started, calling one Actaeon mauled by hounds. Most of the work may date to the late 1560s, with touches from the 1570s. Titian seems never to have resolved it to his satisfaction, and it apparently stayed in his studio until his death in 1576. Whether it is finished is still debated. It was never delivered to Philip.

What to look for

The story follows Ovid's Metamorphoses: Actaeon surprised Diana bathing, and she turned him into a stag to be killed by his own hounds. Ovid does not have Diana chase or shoot him, though some other ancient accounts do. Here she seems to have just loosed an arrow, yet no arrow and no bowstring can be seen. She also lacks her small crescent, which troubled an early critic. The canvas measures about 178.8 by 197.8 cm.

Meaning and intent

It is the tragic sequel to Titian's Diana and Actaeon, part of the poesie, the mythological paintings he called the visual equivalent of poetry, made for Philip from 1551. The subject was rare, and Titian may never have seen another picture of it. Because it was never delivered, it is not always counted in the series. It shows the story's tragic conclusion, after the moment of discovery painted in the earlier picture.

Legacy

It passed through the collections of the Duke of Hamilton, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, Queen Christina of Sweden and the Orleans Collection. The collector Abraham Hume called it a great painting never finished but quite beautiful. In 1914 the National Gallery declined it after a trustee, Alfred de Rothschild, scorned it. A public appeal in 1971 kept it in Britain, and the National Gallery acquired it in 1972. Its looser handling, once taken as a sign it was unfinished, is part of what moves viewers today.