Apollo and Diana Attacking Niobe and her Children

The scene represents an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which Apollo and Diana destroy the children of the arrogant and presumptuous Niobe with a rain of arrows, because she had declared herself superior to Leto, their own mother.

With this painting Lemonnier won the competition for the Prix de Rome in 1772 against Jacques-Louis David, who became bitterly disappointed and made a half-hearted attempt at suicide by starvation.