Every student of Australian art knows that when Arthur Boyd went to London in 1959 and paid his first visit to the National Gallery, two paintings laid siege to his imagination. Titian’s The Death of Actaeon was one from which came Boyd’s tormented Nude and Beast series. The other was Piero di Cosimo’s panel now spiritlessly titled A Satyr Mourning over a Nymph, then known as The Death of Procris. In both cases, the myths were important to Boyd, where the stable relationship of the animal and human world comes adrift. Actaeon, the legendary hunter with his pack of faithful dogs, discovers Diana, Goddess of the Hunt and Chastity – one of the odder combinations of Greek theology – bathing naked with her female entourage. For his gross impiety, Diana turns Actaeon into a stag. His own hounds hunt him down and tear him apart. Sex and savagery collide and awake a deep disturbance within Boyd.