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Xenophon and the Barberini: Pietro da Cortona's Sacrifice to Diana

Pietro da Cortona's Sacrifice to Diana, now lost, is only preserved in a black and-white photograph (Fig. i) and a number f copies and adaptations.1 Painted in Rome for the powerful Barberini family, it depicts a festival scene from Xenophon's Anabasis, his famous account of the adventures of an army of Greek mercenaries in Asia. The unusual inspiration for Cortona's large painting (two metres by three) is Xenophon's proleptic account of his life after his return to Greece, where he mentions that he was at some point exiled from Athens and settled by the Spartans at Scillus, near Olympia in the Peloponnese (v.3.7-13). There, he bought a sanctuary for Artemis of Ephesus (henceforth referred to by her Roman name of Diana) and founded an annual festival in her honour, using a tithe from the profits gained from selling prisoners taken during the Greeks' retreat to the Black Sea. While Xenophon's sketch of his life at Scillus has at times fostered idealised views of him as a country squire and rural philosopher,2 Cortona's is the only major painting known to be based on this section of the Anabasis. The painting could easily be taken for a generic Sacrifice to Diana, with no thought for the exploits of Xenophon himself. It portrays in the foreground, to the left a tall bearded man, garlanded, beside an altar, wearing priestly robes; around him men and women carry up laden plates, bowls and amphoras, offerings for the sacrifice and the feast that will follow; to the right another garlanded man and a woman bear more goods and two young children play with a lamb and a rabbit. Behind the main group of figures is a circular temple in a verdant setting, with single columns around it and, within, some female figures bringing offerings to a