The legendary story of Diana and Actaeon, written in the first century by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses, depicts the unfortunate tale of a young hunter named Actaeon, the Prince of Thebes, who accidentally encounters Artemis, known to the Romans as Diana, the goddess of the hunt, while she was enjoying her bath in nude with her escort of nymphs in a spring. Although Actaeon unwittingly stumbles upon the scene and had no intention to disrupt the privacy of the goddess, the nymphs screamed in surprise at his unwanted presence and attempted to cover Diana. However, as Diana prized her virginity above all else, she did not take it easy of being caught naked by the stranger and in a fit of embarrassed fury decided to punish him cruelly, despite Actaeon committed no crime.

With a wave of her hand, she splashed Actaeon with spring water and said that he would never be able to tell anybody about seeing her naked. As soon as the splashed water of the spring touched his body, Actaeon transformed into a stag with a spotted hide and long antlers and lost his ability to speak. Actaeon immediately realised that he was in danger and promptly tried to run away from the spot in panic, but was soon tracked down and killed by own hounds who failed to recognise their master.

The tale of Diana and Actaeon became very popular during the Renaissance and Titian’s masterpiece, titled Diana and Actaeon, which captures the moment of surprise, is one of his six large scale mythological works based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses that he created between 1549 and 1562, for King Philip II of Spain. Considered one of the greatest works of the artist, it portrays the moment in which the hunter Actaeon unknowingly stumbles upon the scene where the goddess Diana and her nymphs were bathing nude. The painting presents Diana as the pale woman second from the right, wearing a crown with a crescent moon on it and covered by a dark skinned woman displayed at the extreme right of the canvas, while the nude nymphs display different expressions of awe and surprise.

After the French Revolution, the painting eventually ended up in the hands of Francis Egerton, the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, and later inherited by his nephew, Earl Gover, and is now shared in alternate five-year terms by the National Gallery London and the National Galleries of Scotland, and subsequently been moved to Scotland for safekeeping during the Second World War.

The Death of Actaeon, a late work by the Italian Renaissance painter Titian, a sequel of his work Diana and Actaeon, which apparently remained in his studio until his death in 1576, shows Actaeon in the process of transformation is being torn to death by his own hounds. Although Ovid's account is silent about Diana chasing Acetaeon, in the painting she dominates the foreground, seems to have just loosed an arrow, while the bowstring is not visible in the canvas, nor there any sign of the arrow in the painting, and the small crescent in the hair of the goddess, as attributed earlier in the artist’s earlier work Diana and Actaeon, is also absent.

Nevertheless, The Death of Actaeon was never delivered to Philip, and there has been considerable debate as to whether it is finished or not, as it not signed by the artist, which is perhaps an indication of completion.

Apart from Titian, the story of Ovid's Metamorphoses was one of the favourite subjects of several other masters, which include among others, the Flemish artist Jacob Jordaens. In the years around 1640, he depicted the story in one his compositions, displaying the young hunter carrying a spear and followed by his dogs, dressed in a length of red cloth, while the naked figures of Diana and her companions, separated by a narrow stretch of water flowing along the lower edge of the painting, are almost in a straight line view of the hunter and seemingly lined up for the viewer. Although the unabashed nudity of those voluptuous women, some curiously bent, some standing, and some crouching, departs from Ovid's descriptions, probably it was the major reason for the artist's choice of the subject, demonstrating his prowess in painting the nude.

However, the Italian painter Giuseppe Ceseri in his composition has visually transformed Ovid’s mischievous playfulness and naughty wit with great skill. It seems from his work that the unexpected appearance of the young hunter raised feigned alarm, not real, among the goddess and the nymphs, and it is evident from their poses that they simply acted as the surprised bathers. While the second nymph from the left with her hair lifted as a result of her sudden move away from the young hunter grabs the next nymph, but she turns her flirting eyes to look at the intruder, the hunter also looks back, mirroring her expression of appreciation. On the other hand, despite Diana’s relentless hatred described in the legendary story, the way she splashes him with the deadly water in the painting, could also suggest a gesture of invitation of lovemaking. Apart from that, the innocent girlish faces of the goddess and the nymphs, as presented in the painting, are aesthetically contrasted by the master artist with voluptuous female bodies.