AMORY: In the lower center of this painting by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, you’ll see the story of Diana and Actaeon. Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt and a sworn virgin, forbade any man to see her naked. The hunter Actaeon had the misfortune of surprising her at her bath. She turned him into a stag—you can see him silhouetted against the hollow on the left—and he was devoured by his own hunting dogs. Corot didn’t depict Actaeon’s violent end. But he alludes to it with the dog on the right side of the canvas, which is headed enthusiastically in the stag’s direction. Corot communicates the narrative beautifully here—Diana’s pose expresses a powerful determination, while her attendants shield themselves modestly. But clearly Corot is as interested in the landscape as he is the story. The action seems to occur in a real place—not in an idealized setting, as it would have in earlier mythological paintings. Corot was one of the principal painters of the Barbizon school. This group worked in the forests of Fontainbleau near Paris, and championed the natural environment as a subject in its own right.