London’s Royal Ballet and National Gallery are to join forces on an Olympics project that will bring together top British artists and dancers to celebrate some of the most valuable paintings in the gallery’s collection reports Louise Jury for the Evening Standard.

Artists including Turner Prize winners Chris Ofili and Mark Wallinger are working with choreographers such as Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon on the venture which takes three paintings by Renaissance master Titian as its inspiration.

The paintings, which are all based on the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses, include Diana and Actaeon, and its sister work Diana and Callisto. The ambitious collaboration will culminate in an exhibition of the paintings at the National Gallery and a new triple bill of one-act ballets to be premiered at the Royal Opera House in the summer of 2012.

The ballets will be the final program of works for Monica Mason, sixty-nine, who will be leaving the Royal Ballet after more than half a century, first as dancer and, for the last nine years, as director.

A spokeswoman said, “Monica didn’t want a big tribute gala to her, she wanted to put on something quite new that would leave a legacy. It’s really about giving her a great send-off.”