#Diana and Actaeon

[afieldinengland]

felix catton and oliver quick as diana and actaeon inverted

paul manship, actaeon | fred b. tromly, playing with desire: christopher marlowe and the art of tantalization | saltburn (2023), dir. emerald fennell | leonard barkan, diana and actaeon: the myth as synthesis | edith wharton, artemis to actaeon

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Gaston Casimir Saint-Pierre (French, 1833-1916) Diana and Actaeon, n.d.

[fungoideale]

Actaeon transformed into a stag by Diana for daring to peek on her while she was bathing (Ovid, Metamorphoses)

[carnageandculture]

Diana And Actaeon, Domenico Veneziano, ca. 1438-1461

[iamf0rtis]

titties so good my dogs had to rip me apart 😘

gyatt so good the dogs caught me lacking 😍

[b-mw]

Cesar Corrales as Actaeon

[alexandrarosa]

The Diana and Actaeon reference on the cover of The Secret History is honestly some galaxy brain design

[miss-mollys-ballet-blog]

Midori Terada in Diana and Actaeon. 

[clairity-org]

Lorenzo di Niccolò, Childbirth tray, Diana and Actaeon, ca. 1380-1400, Tempera and gold leaf on wood panel, 11/23/22 #legionofhonor #artmuseum by Sharon Mollerus

[the-evil-clergyman]

Diane et Actéon by Jean-Léon Gérôme (19th Century)

[diioonysus]

artemis & diana + art

[artemis-potnia-theron]

Relief of Artemis and her nymphs + the transformation of Actaeon at the Bode Museum in Berlin.

🌙🏹🦌

[fleurdemaiko]

diana and actaeon

by gaston casimir saint-pierre (1833-1916)

[haggishlyhagging]

Consider the myths which surround this revelation. We believe a woman is naturally modest, ashamed of her own body, afraid by nature to reveal her flesh. And on the other hand, we believe the sight of this flesh has a transformative effect on the mind of a man. That if a woman shows a bit of her legs, or her shoulder, or even leans over so that a man may see where her breasts meet, that a man will be overcome with desire for her, and compelled almost, by this sight, to rape her. (A judge in Utah, for instance, overturned a jury's verdict of guilty against a rapist because his victim was "flimsily dressed." Thus behind female modesty there lurks the shape of an awesome female power.

For if a woman by her beauty can make a man into a rapist, she can also transform him in other ways. Her overwhelming seductive powers can lead him into the world of flesh and the devil. Desiring her, he forgets his soul. He moves into eternal perdition. And in this eternal perdition, he loses the eternal life of his spirit. The full weight of an earthly mortality falls upon his consciousness.

But we can read in this religious scenario another language and another range of meanings, which belong to the life of the psyche. When a woman's beauty brings a man into the realm of the material, he must live in his body. He must know himself as matter. Therefore, he must give up the illusion that his mind controls his body, or that culture controls nature. Rather, inside the experience of sexual knowledge, he learns that culture and nature, meaning and love, spirit and matter, are one. And in this he loses the illusion that culture has given him against the knowledge of the vulnerability of his own flesh.

And now if we move from the language of the psyche back to mythology, we can read myth in a new light. We have a new understanding, for example, of the story of Actaeon. We see him enter the forest looking for animal prey. He is the controller of nature; he is the hunter. But by accident, or we might say through fate, by the natural occurrence of circumstances, he comes upon the goddess Diana as she is bathing in a pool. We know that he is stunned by her beauty. And we also know that this moment of beauty will lead to his death. For the beautiful goddess will reach her hand into the water (a pool in which, like Narcissus, he must be able to see his own reflection), she will splash his face with this watery face, and he will turn into an animal. Now we know the rest of his story. As a stag, he runs through the forest. But the scent of his animal body is detected by his own hunting dogs. And thus these animals, which were his own (and which belonged to his psyche), will now tear him to pieces.

The idea that the sight of a woman's body calls a man back to his own animal nature, and that this animal nature soon destroys him, reverberates throughout culture. We find it in the most ancient sources. In the Biblical story of creation, we discover Eve, who has spoken with a serpent, seducing Adam into eating an apple, the forbidden fruit of knowledge. Through this seduction, the commentators tell us, "Eve brought death into the world."

-Susan Griffin, Pornography and Silence: Culture’s Revenge Against Nature

[frankenmouse]

Edward MacCartan (1879-1947), Diana

Cast in Bronze

[nupaintings]