Latona - Versailles, France - Epic Beings and Creatures on Waymarking.com

This sculpture of Latona is part of the Latona Fountain in the Gardens of the Versailles Palace. The artists are Gaspard and Balthazard Marsy. The work depicts Latona (known as Leto by the Greeks) naked but for a cloth wrapped around her waist. She holds the infant Apollo on her left and Artemis is seated near her right foot facing the opposite direction.

This website (visit link) further describes the fountain:
"Inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Latona fountain illustrates the legend of Apollo’s mother and Diana protecting her children against the insults of the peasants of Lycia, and calling on Jupiter to avenge them. He heard their plea and transformed them into frogs and lizards.
The central marble group sculpted by the Marsy brothers represents Latona and her children. The group was originally placed on a rock in 1670. It was surrounded by six frogs emerging partly from the water, and twenty-four others around the fountain on the lawn. The goddess then looked towards the Château. This arrangement was modified by Jules Hardouin-Mansart between 1687 and 1689. The rock was replaced on a concentric marble base and the Latona group henceforth gazes towards the Grand Canal. The Latona fountain is prolonged by a parterre holding the two lizard pools."

Wikipedia (visit link) informs us that Latona:
"...is a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe.[1] The island of Kos is claimed as her birthplace.[2] In the Olympian scheme, Zeus is the father of her twins,[3] Apollo and Artemis, the Letoides, which Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eyes of Zeus. For the classical Greeks, Leto is scarcely to be conceived apart from being pregnant and finding a place to be delivered of Apollo and Artemis, for Hera being jealous, made it so all lands shunned her. Finally, she finds an island that isn't attached to the ocean floor so it isn't considered land and she can give birth.[4] This is her one active mythic role: once Apollo and Artemis are grown, Leto withdraws, to remain a dim[5] and benevolent matronly figure upon Olympus, her part already played. In Roman mythology, Leto's equivalent is Latona, a Latinization of her name, influenced by Etruscan Letun."

Time Period: Ancient Approximate Date of Epic Period: c. 800 BC Epic Type: Mythical Exhibit Type: Figure, Statue, 3D Art

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