Diane d’Apollo, 1975
From the series Space
(Homage to Robert McCall)
Oil on canvas
39 3/8 x 34 ½ in. (100 x 88 cm)
Private collection

In 1976, during a trip to the U.S. in connection with the exhibition 06 art 76, organized by the Centre Georges Pompidou for the Bicentennial, Erró visited a NASA base in Houston, donned an astronaut’s spacesuit, entered a space capsule, and experienced astronaut training. He also obtained many documents that he later used in the Space series.

In Diane d’Apollo, Erró pairs a portrait of Diane de Poitiers, mistress to French king Henry II,  with a heroic group of U.S. astronauts. Packed with gender-based tensions, the picture conjoins two familiar stereotypes--the ultra-masculinity of the space-suited astronauts and the ultra-femininity of a Renaissance female nude--yielding an image that startles in its willingness to confront such assumptions.