Diana and Her Nymphs Departing for the Hunt (c. 1615): Art, History and Details

Diana and Her Nymphs Departing for the Hunt (c. 1615) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640); Workshop.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, wears a crescent on her forehead, also identifying her as the moon goddess. Diana lived apart from men, accompanied by a group of nymphs; she often represented unattainable beauty or chastity. With a nymph at left fending off a lustful satyr, Rubens refers to a struggle between vice and virtue, combining a sensual display of female bodies with a moral undertone. To bring the viewer more fully into the narrative, Rubens pulls the full-bodied figures to the front of the picture plane, and Diana steps forward, activating the space between viewer and subject. The nymph at the right has the features of Isabella Brant, the artist’s wife, and can be compared with Rubens’s portrait of her, also in the museum's collection.

Object facts

• Title: Diana and Her Nymphs Departing for the Hunt
• Date: c. 1615
• Creator attribution: Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640); Workshop
• Culture: Flanders
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 261 x 225 x 11 cm (102 3/4 x 88 9/16 x 4 5/16 in.); Unframed: 216 x 178.7 cm (85 1/16 x 70 3/8 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Flemish
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1959.190

A detail from the museum

The moon and stars on the white and black dog’s collar indicate that both hounds are companions of Diana, accompanying the goddess on her hunts.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisition Press Release,” September 14, 1959, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• S. E. L. “Year in Review.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 46, no. 10 (December 1959): 210–231.
• Rubens, Peter Paul, and Henry S. Francis. “Diana and Her Nymphs Departing for the Chase.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 47, no. 2 (February 1960): 19–27.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.