It is very probably one of the two paintings the artist stated he had started and hopes to finish (one of which he calls "Actaeon mauled by hounds") in a letter to their commissioner Philip II of Spain during June 1559.

[2] It is a sequel of Titian's work Diana and Actaeon showing the story's tragic conclusion, which approximately follows the Roman poet Ovid's account in the Metamorphoses: after Actaeon surprised the goddess Diana bathing naked in the woods, she transformed him into a stag and he was attacked and killed by his own hounds.

[3] Both paintings belong to a group of large-scale mythological paintings inspired by the Metamorphoses and referred to by Titian himself as ‘poesie’, the visual equivalent of poetry, which he began producing for Philip II of Spain in 1551[4] and which also include Danaë (many versions, the original, the first for Philip is in Apsley House, London, after Joseph Bonaparte took it away when he left Spain.

A later copy of Titian himself, perhaps the most sensual of all is in the Prado, Madrid), Venus and Adonis (original in the Prado, Madrid, but also other versions), Perseus and Andromeda (Wallace Collection, London), The Rape of Europa (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto (shared by National Gallery of Scotland with NG London).

Hamilton's brother-in-law, Basil Feilding, 2nd Earl of Denbigh (as he later became) was English ambassador to Venice, and helped to arrange the purchase.

[8] Hamilton, who was a Royalist commander in the English Civil War, was captured and executed in 1649 after losing the Battle of Preston to Oliver Cromwell.

Other trustees may have been in favour but the "difficult character" of Rothschild, who was hoped to be planning a bequest to the gallery, might have resigned if the purchase was made.