Artemis who Artemis turns into a stag for a transgression and who is then killed by hunting dogs. Usually, the dogs are his own, who no longer recognize their master. Sometimes they are Artemis' hounds. According to the standard modern text on the work, Lamar Ronald Lacey's "The Myth of Aktaion: Literary and Iconographic Studies", the most likely original version of the myth is that Actaeon was the hunting companion of the goddess who, seeing her naked in her sacred spring, attempts to force himself on her. For this hubris, he is turned into a stag and devoured by his own
The Death of Actaeon reliefs and engraved gems showing either Diana hunting with dogs, or Actaeon being attacked by his dogs, and a few Renaissance works, but the subject was rare, and "it may be that Titian had never seen another painting or other representation of the subject." It was probably still in Titian's studio at his death in 1576, and presumably sold in Venice by his heirs. It probably belonged to the famous Venetian collection of Bartolomeo della Nave, most of which was bought for James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton (then still a Marquess) in 1636-38, one of the great collectors of