Diana and callisto titian

The nymph Callisto was the favourite of Diana, virgin goddess of the hunt. Jupiter, king of the gods, noticed her beauty and disguised himself to seduce her. Titian has painted the moment Diana forces Callisto to strip and bathe after hunting and discovers her pregnancy. The contours of the figures dissolve as the thinnest of dragged brushstrokes are swept over the surface of the canvas, contributing to the sense of dynamism and movement. The stream runs from one painting to the other and elements and poses are echoed, creating a rhythm across both canvases.

The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on Fingers are very important in art too — an excellent book was written about them in Fingers, being so wheedlingly curious, get everywhere in art, the long and the short varieties, the crookedly gnarly or the pearly-straight-and-oh-so-evenly-tapering. Think of the extraordinarily extended fingers of Parmigianino's figures; or of the bolt of electricity that zaps across from the extended first finger of a very gruff God to the First Man on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; and, most pertinently today, the crucial, nay pivotal, importance of the finger in this mid-career Titian, which has just been rescued for the nation, sparing us the horrible humiliation of being obliged to see it elsewhere in the world. It is currently on display — go and look at it for yourself — in an altarwise, owlish light in Gallery 1 of the National Gallery. Reflecting on Fitzgerald's words for a moment or two leads to some surprising conclusions.

Callisto was the favourite of Diana, virgin goddess of the hunt. Her beauty aroused the attention of Jupiter, king of the gods, who seduced her by disguising himself as Diana. Nine months later Callisto's pregnancy was discovered when she was forced by her suspicious companions to strip and bathe after hunting. Titian chose to paint the moment of her humiliating exposure and banishment from Diana's chaste entourage.

Diana and Callisto is a painting completed between and by the Italian late Renaissance artist Titian. It portrays the moment in which the goddess Diana discovers that her maid Callisto has become pregnant by Jupiter. There is a later version by Titian and his workshop in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Diana and Callisto is part of a series of seven famous canvasses, the "poesies" , depicting mythological scenes from Ovid 's Metamorphoses painted for Philip II of Spain after Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor had declined Titian's offer to paint them for him.