Veil of Isis the motif of the veiled Isis. One was a tradition that linked Isis with nature and the goddess Artemis. European art has a long tradition of personifying nature as a motherly figure. Starting in the 16th century, this motif was influenced by the iconography of the goddess Artemis of Ephesus (also known under the name of her Roman equivalent, Diana). The Ephesian Artemis was depicted with round protuberances on her chest that may originally have been jewelry but came to be interpreted as breasts. Isis was sometimes compared with Artemis, and the Roman writer Macrobius, in the fourth century CE,
Artemis Artemis is not fully related in any surviving myth. The "Iliad" reduced the figure of the dread goddess to that of a girl, who, having been thrashed by Hera, climbs weeping into the lap of Zeus. A poem by Callimachus to the goddess "who amuses herself on mountains with archery" imagines some charming vignettes. Artemis, while sitting on the knee of her father, Zeus, asked him to grant her several wishes: Artemis believed that she had been chosen by the Fates to be a midwife, particularly since she had assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin brother, Apollo.