Ashmolean The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

The lithograph shows a small figure of Apollo, holding a drawn bow, in the arms of Leto (or perhaps, as Lenormant and de Witte suggest, Ortygia); Artemis stands beside them. The Python is coiled amongst the rocks on the right. The print reproduces the decoration of a burnt white-ground lekythos then in the collection of Monsieur Dubois, under-curator at the Louvre. The print was plate I A in the second volume of Lenormant and de Witte's "Elite des monuments céramographiques", published in 1857. It was presumably taken from Ruskin's copy of the work now preserved in the Ruskin Library (inventory no. 1996B2621), which is missing many of its plates.

The print was first catalogued by Ruskin in 1871, when it appeared as no. 127 in the Educational Series, entitled "The Python. Latona, Apollo, and Artemis", placed in Case VIII, "Elementary Zoology". It was framed together with a plate of Leto clutching Apollo and Artemis as she flees the Python, also from Lenormant and de Witte. It remained in the same position, although renumbered as no. 177, in the 1874 catalogue of the series, but does not appear in Ruskin's 1878 reorganisation of the series.