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The Diana of Versailles, also called the Artemis of Versailles, shows the goddess of the hunt striding forward with her right hand reaching for an arrow from the quiver on her back. She wears a short, girded tunic that leaves her knees bare, and her hair is bound up. A small deer or hound bounds beside her. The pose is one of sudden movement, caught in the instant before the arrow is drawn.
The statue is a Roman marble copy of a Greek bronze, usually attributed to Leochares, a sculptor of the fourth century BC who worked on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The original bronze is lost; the Roman copy was made in the first or second century AD. The figure was restored in the seventeenth century, and the hands and the animal are later additions.
The sculpture was given by Pope Paul IV to Henry II of France in 1556 and was installed at the Chateau de Versailles, where it stood in the Hall of Mirrors and later in the gardens. It was moved to the Louvre in 1798 and is displayed in the Salle des Caryatides, the great Renaissance hall built by Pierre Lescot in the sixteenth century.
The original is attributed to Leochares, a Greek sculptor active in the fourth century BC who worked on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and on the Philippeion at Olympia. The Louvre’s version is a Roman copy by an unknown hand, made in the first or second century AD.
The statue’s history is a history of French royal collecting: a papal gift to Henry II, a fixture at Versailles under Louis XIV, and a revolutionary transfer to the museum in 1798. Its display in the Salle des Caryatides places it in the oldest surviving part of the Louvre palace, where it stands among the museum’s Greek and Roman antiquities.
Sully Wing · Ground Floor · Salle des Caryatides (Room 348)
The Louvre is divided into three wings — Denon, Sully and Richelieu — reached from the hall beneath the glass pyramid.
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