Diana and Actaeon

The overdoor painting depicts a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses or Loves of the Gods concerning the History of the moon deity Artemis Diana. As the personification of 'Virtue' and 'goddess of childbirth' such scenes of Diana, particularly The Bath of Diana, well suited the fashionable Charles II bedroom apartment decorated 'à la Français'. This painting is executed en suite with the overmantel painting Lot 227. Amongst the Netherlandish artists established in Scotland around 1700 was Philipp Tideman (1657-1705), who executed some three dozen decorative classical compositions for Hopetoun House, West Lothian (B. Skinner, Philip Tideman and the Allegorical Decorations at Hopetoun House, The Burlington Magazine, 106, 1964 pp.368-373).