Pallas Athena

Part of a series of twelve prints depicting the nine muses and the three major female Olympian goddesses, these designs were probably intended for the decoration of the royal bath chambers; it is likely that this series of pictures of reclining women, some quite scantily clad, were considered appropriate for the sensuous atmosphere of the baths.The royal bath chambers also housed François’s great collection of art by all the great Italian masters-Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian-including the Mona Lisa herself. It was only in the early seventeenth century, when many great works had already deteriorated beyond recognition, that François’s collection was moved to more suitable housing in the Louvre, where it formed the core of one of the greatest museum collections in the world.