Diana of Versailles Diana of Versailles The Diana of Versailles is a slightly over lifesize marble statue of the Roman goddess Diana (Greek: Artemis), with a deer, located in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. It is a Roman copy (1st or 2nd century AD) of a lost Greek bronze original attributed to Leochares, c. 325 BC. The statue is also known as "Diana à la Biche", "Diane Chasseresse" ("Diana Huntress"), "Artemis of the Chase", and "Artemis with the Hind". The statue was discovered in Italy: the Louvre website suggests Nemi, where there was an ancient sanctuary; other sources posit Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli;
Roman mythology founded Roman religion; Numa was believed to have had as his consort and adviser a Roman goddess or nymph of fountains and of prophecy, Egeria. The Etruscan-influenced Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva later became central to official religion, replacing the Archaic Triad — an unusual example within Indo-European religion of a supreme triad formed of two female deities and only one male. The cult of Diana became established on the Aventine Hill, but the most famous Roman manifestation of this goddess may be Diana Nemorensis, owing to the attention paid to her cult by J.G. Frazer in the