Diana at the Hunt - Diana and Her Nymphs on the Point of Leaving

Diana at the Hunt (c. 1623) at the Fondation de la Maison de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris is an unusually appropriate institutional setting for a subject depicting the divine patroness of the hunt with her nymphs preparing for the chase. The Fondation, housed in the Hôtel de Guénégaud in the Marais district, is dedicated to the cultural history of hunting and natural history in European art; Rubens's Diana and her nymphs as a hunting party goddess connects directly to this institutional mission. By 1623 Rubens had treated Diana and the hunt subject multiple times — the goddess appeared in his hunt compositions as their divine sanction and presiding deity, as well as in narrative subjects like Diana and Callisto and the encounter with Actaeon. His treatment of Diana was consistently sympathetic: the goddess's chastity and athletic strength aligned with Rubens's admiration for active physical virtue, and his nymphs are vigorous and purposeful rather than passively decorative. The aristocratic hunt culture that commissioned his hunt paintings would have recognized in Diana's company a divine precedent for their own pleasures.

The composition arranges Diana and her attendant nymphs in a dynamic group within a lush landscape setting. Rubens' luminous flesh painting and rich, warm palette create an atmosphere of mythological splendor.

This painting of Diana preparing for the hunt has been conserved with attention to the multiple figure-landscape relationships. The canvas has been relined. The flesh tones retain their characteristic warmth while some of the landscape greens have shifted due to copper resinate degradation.