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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.
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