The Hellenic ideal of the virgin-huntress, the goddess kindly to boys and maidens and to the living things of the wood, as it was perfected in the religious hymn and the Euripidean drama, was not fully embodied in Greek art until the age of Praxiteles and the great painters of Alexander's period. Yet the developed archaic art had done something for the expression of the Artemis-type, and had given it movement and life. The fragment of an Attic vase quoted above a shows a very striking representation of the divinity which we may date about 470 b. c. She is clad in Ionic chiton and mantle with a panther's skin over her shoulders, holding in her left hand the bow and raising in her right hand a flower towards her lips. The golden-coloured drapery and the white flesh suggest a cult-image of chryselephantine technique, and the figure may be a copy of the older image in the Brauronian temple on the Acropolis.

Of considerable importance also for character and style is the Pompeian statuette in the Museum of Naples (Pl. XXXII. b), representing Artemis striding forward, clad in a chiton with sleeves and a finely textured mantle, with a quiver at her back; the fingers are restored, but the one hand must have been holding a bow or torch, the other holding up the skirt of her dress; a diadem adorned with rosettes crowns her head, of which the hair has been given a golden tinge.