Fontainebleau Nymph, Bronze relief sculpture at Escalier Mollien, Louvre Museum, France

The Fontainebleau Nymph is a bronze relief at the Louvre in Paris, showing a reclining female figure nearly life-size at about 6 feet 9 inches (205 cm) tall and 13 feet 5 inches (409 cm) wide. A stag rests beside her head while boars and hunting dogs fill the surrounding space.

Benvenuto Cellini cast the relief around 1543 for François I, who intended it for the tympanum above the Porte Dorée at the Château de Fontainebleau; it was never installed there. Around 1552 Philibert de L'Orme placed it over the entrance gate of the Château d'Anet, home of Diane de Poitiers. Seized on 23 March 1794 during the Revolution, it reached the Louvre in 1797 and was long displayed in the Salle des Caryatides.

The reclining nude was recast as Diana, goddess of the hunt, when Philibert de L'Orme placed it over the entrance gate of the Château d'Anet around 1552. There the nymph stood for the château's owner, Diane de Poitiers, and the stag for her lover, King Henri II. The antlers are crowned with fruit, an emblem of François I.

The relief sits on the Mollien Staircase inside the Louvre, making it easy to see while moving between galleries. Arriving early in the day helps avoid the largest crowds and allows a calmer view of the work.

The relief was cast in Cellini's Paris workshop at the Hôtel de Nesle, with sculptors Thomas Dambry, Pierre Bontemps and Laurent Mailleu assisting and foundrymen Pierre Villain and Guillaume Saligot assembling the bronze. It was Cellini's first large-scale bronze casting, and the tympanum was never installed at the Porte Dorée it was made for.