Gods had terrifying transformative powers in the ancient Greek world, and Artemis, as a virgin huntress with a special role in rites of passage, was one of the most fearsome. On this krater, she is punishing the hunter Aktaion with death for surprising her while she was bathing. Having set his own hunting hounds on him, she turns to shoot him with her bow. In later painted versions of this myth, Aktaion is transformed into a stag that will be devoured by the dogs; deer were sacred to Artemis, as indicated by the deerskin she wears. Although the goddess is fully clothed, her hair falls down her back, unbound, hinting at Aktaion's view of the goddess naked. The contrast with Aktaion's heroic nudity reveals the differing norms for portraying men and women-even goddesses-during the early Classical period.

This elegant scene represents some of the most accomplished painting in the red-figure technique. Small details, such as the goddess's left foot poised on the bottom meander border and the hunter's left arm rigidly holding the weight of his body, add movement and immediacy to the composition and demonstrate the progress Athenian artists had made in representing the human form. The tenacious bites of the dogs and Aktaion's futile gesture to the gods above illustrate how precarious the favor of deities was in fifth-century Athens, and how myth was a means of understanding the human predicament. The other side of this krater
features one of the earliest Greek representations of the half-goat god Pan, giving the artist the conventional name "The Pan Painter."

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