The poet Michel d’Amboise relates how he gallantly offered the lady he idolised a portrait of herself as Venus. The fair damsel looked at the object with not a little pleasure; but as it was necessary for the sake of principle to reprimand the painter, she asked him where he had managed to see her in this unusual guise. He replied, like a genuine courtier: J’ay ta façon sceue par celuy Qui est à toy trop plus qu’il n’est à luy.[178] “Indeed!” she cried. “But he has never seen me either.” We owe to Ronsard, to whom it was an every-day affair to be in love, a description of the lover’s method. He goes to Janet Clouet,[179] and requests a portrait of his lady-love with every possible charm. Actually he has seen no more of her than the graceful oval of her face and her lithe swan-neck, but that does not prevent his describing the rest of her, and bespeaking for the portrait, with the fullest confidence, the most ravishing details. Clouet sets to work there and then on a very charming portrait, which will perhaps not be a very striking likeness after all. In such a case (from a sentiment that sufficiently explains itself), when the desire was to do homage in some way to the presumptive beauty of some particular lady, the most elementary idea of discretion prompted the artist to idealise her features a little, with the result that, the features being all there is to guide us, we may say that pictures of this kind are not, strictly speaking, portraits; they are ideas, _arrière-pensées_, illusions more or less transparent. If tradition could be trusted, how many portraits should we have, for instance, of Diana of Poitiers? That noble lady herself commissioned a fair number of Dianas, which may pass for symbols, for the glorification of her name and work. But, without speaking of likenesses that are more than doubtful, among all those which M. Guiffrey has so ably catalogued, even those signed by the most illustrious names, we do not find one that is really a likeness. This defect might be pardoned in the enamels, even those signed by Leonard Limosin,[180] but what excuse can be made for Jean Goujon?[181] Look for instance at the superb Diana in the Louvre: done for Anet, it triumphantly challenged all heaven to surpass this human beauty, synthetised in one vigorous woman, one true divinity, monumental, imposing, of commanding port between her deer and her hounds, in no wise voluptuous—a remote cousin of Michelangelo’s Eve, though degraded to rule over forests and dogs and men. Clearly it was the châtelaine’s own wish to glorify her creed, her ideal, her patroness; Jean Goujon has deified her, sung her praises, interpreted her; and yet we have no difficulty in recognising, from certain realistic touches, how careful he is to remind us that he was celebrating a terrestrial divinity. Is this a portrait? No. It is enough to compare this statue with the authentic likeness of Diana of Poitiers on medallions.