Diana on the stag hunt

Diana on the Stag Hunt, 1632, in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, places Snyders squarely in the tradition of mythological hunt painting that connected classical subject matter with the aristocratic culture of the chase. Diana, goddess of the hunt, presided over the entire genre conceptually — invoking her name elevated a depiction of actual hunting practice to mythological status while legitimising the subject's violence through divine sanction. Snyders worked on such subjects in close collaboration with Rubens, who would supply the figure of Diana while Snyders painted the animals, landscape, and hunting activity. The Berlin version may represent a case where both hands were involved, or where Snyders painted the figure himself at a stage when his figure painting had developed sufficient confidence for mythological subjects. The Gemäldegalerie Berlin holds one of Europe's great collections of European painting from the thirteenth through eighteenth centuries.

The mythological subject requires Snyders to integrate the idealised figure of Diana — her pose drawn from classical sources and Rubensian convention — with the naturalistic animal painting that was his primary strength. The stag is rendered with his full anatomical attention: coat texture, musculature under stress, the specific anatomy of the species' neck and haunches. The hunt dogs show individual breed characteristics. Diana's figure is handled with more generalised, smoother modelling appropriate to mythological idealism.