Beskrivning: Se även beskrivning i den engelska versionen

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 232:

Technical notes: The support, a fine, plain weave
canvas, has been lined. The fabric support sustained
damage in the form of a short tear at the lower right, in
the figure of a satyr pursuing a nymph.
One or two pentimenti can be seen with the naked eye:
Diana’s right thigh was evidently first painted at a higher
level, and the outlines of her outstretched left leg have
been slightly adjusted.
Although the thin upper layers in the landscape background
are moderately abraded, the painting is overall in
very good condition, particularly the figures in the foreground,
with minor losses confined to the tear and edges.
The painting underwent conservation treatment in 1935,
1976 and 1977.

Provenance: Gustav III 1792, no. 127 (as Abraham van
Diepenbeeck); KM 1795, no. 34; KM 1816, no. 679.

Exhibited: Stockholm 1977, no. 62 (as Hendrick van
Balen I).

Bibliography: NM Cat. 1867, p. 27 (as Abraham van
Diepenbeeck); Sander II, p. 113; Göthe 1887, pp. 67–68
(as Abraham van Diepenbeeck); Göthe 1893, p. 83; NM
Cat. 1958, p. 60 (as Abraham van Diepenbeeck); Balis
1986, p. 245 n. 6 (as Frans Wouters); NM Cat. 1990, p.
112 (as Abraham van Diepenbeeck).

Five satyrs – with two more approaching in the background
– attempt to overpower the chaste goddess
Diana and her nymphs as they rest after the hunt. The
female figure on the right, brandishing an arrow, is
probably the goddess herself. Eight of her nude companions
are engaged in a fierce struggle with the wanton,
cloven-footed sylvan deities, while another
nymph in the right foreground, fully clothed, sleeps
quietly on. Five dogs snap fiercely at the satyrs. The
struggle takes place on the banks of a narrow stream
flowing through a pastoral landscape, the feathery
foliage of the trees silhouetted against a warm golden
sky. A reference to hunting – Diana’s favourite pastime
– is seen by the inclusion of the nymphs’ hunting gear
in the foreground (bow and quivers, javelins, horns)
together with dead game (a wild boar, does, hares).
The colour scheme is based on a contrast between the
flesh-tints – white for the nymphs, brown for the satyrs
– and the greenish landscape and golden skies,
enlivened by brighter spots of drapery: crimson for
Diana, green for the nymph to her left, sky-blue for
the nymph being attacked on the left.

This painting carries an old attribution to the
Antwerp history painter Abraham van Diepenbeeck
that was retained until its present reattribution to
Frans Wouters.1 Several of the rather Rubenesque figures
were literally borrowed or adapted from a painting
of the same subject in Madrid (Museo nacional del
Prado), from the series of eighteen paintings by Peter
Paul Rubens in collaboration with the animal painter
Frans Snyders – eight of which are hunting scenes and
related subjects – commissioned by King Philip IV of
Spain in 1639 for his summer quarters in the Alcázar,
the royal palace in Madrid.2 Thus, for example, the
motif of a satyr catching hold of a nymph at the back
of the group of figures on the left is copied after
Rubens’ composition; the nymph seen from the back
in the group on the left, with drapery swirling around
her outstretched right arm brandishing an arrow, was
adapted from Rubens’ Diana; the reclining nude
nymph on the right, being valiantly defended by
Diana against a satyr, was adapted from the third
nymph from the right in Rubens’ painting – the position
of her legs has been reversed, and the Satyr now
grabs her breast instead of her arms, while attempting
to shield himself from the arrow with his outstretched
right arm; the sleeping nymph in the foreground of
Rubens’ composition, her pose inspired by an antique
statue of the Sleeping Hermaphrodite, has metamorphosed
into the nymph in the left foreground of the
Stockholm picture, raising herself from the ground on
muscular arms. In addition, the pose of the satyr chas-
ing a fleeing nymph at the back of the group on the
right was apparently copied after another painting in
the Alcázar series, The Death of Silvia’s Stag, in which a
nymph rushes forward with arms extended behind the
figure of the kneeling Silvia.3 The dog climbing out of
the stream onto the right bank seems to have been
copied after one attacking a wild boar in the Death of
Adonis from the same series, or after Snyders’ model
drawing.4 Unlike other copies after the Alcázar series,
the present picture is not a faithful copy but rather an
adaptation and reworking of Rubens’ original composition.
Instead of Rubens’ large frieze-like painting, we
have a smaller, cabinet-sized piece, with many smallscale
figures divided into two groups arrayed in the
foreground of a vast landscape. A copy of the present
painting was on the Swedish art market in 1962.5

The subject of Diana and her nymphs surprised by
satyrs was treated repeatedly by Wouters in the last
decade of his life, in paintings preserved in London
(The National Gallery of Art), Vienna (Kunsthistorisches
Museum) and Copenhagen (Statens Museum
for Kunst).6 In the Stockholm painting, as in
Rubens’ Madrid original on which it is based, the
eroticized, voyeuristic atmosphere of some of these
scenes has been transformed into violence, with a satyr
on the right grabbing the breast of a nymph, and a
nymph on the left giving a satyr a swift kick in the
groin. Fauns and satyrs were often represented in
ancient mythology attacking wood nymphs, who
struggled to free themselves, and the subject occurs in
antique statuary.7 However, the subject of a band of
satyrs attacking Diana and her nymphs in the manner
depicted in the present work, is exceedingly rare.
Although faithful copies exist of several paintings in
Rubens’ series of eight hunting scenes for the Alcázar,
copies of the Diana and Her Nymphs Attacked by Satyrs
are rarer than with other paintings in the series.8 A
cabinet-sized copy attributed to Wouters was on the
British art market in 1998,9 and there are copies after
the Death of Actaeon, the Death of Adonis, and the Death
of Silvia’s Stag, attributed to the same artist.10 For the
most part the cabinet-sized copies, in which the landscape
setting typically occupies a larger area than in
Rubens’ originals, follow the compositions of the
large-scale canvases. However, two of Wouters’ copies
were, in part, apparently copied after Rubens’ oil
sketches, suggesting that he probably had access to
materials from the master’s studio after his death.11
While his copies after the Alcázar series were probably
painted in the early 1640s, a mature, independent
work such as the present picture must have been executed
comparatively late in the artist’s career. The figures
as well as the arcadian landscape can be stylistically
compared with the Diana Sleeping in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches
Museum), dated by Kemmer to the
early 1650s.12 The present painting may be dated
somewhat earlier, around the mid-1640s.
CF

1 Horst Gerson tentatively suggested an attribution to Wouters already in
1956; see the letter by Gerson dated 16 August 1956 in the curatorial files
of the Paintings Department of the Nationalmuseum. This opinion was
shared by Balis 1986, p. 245 n. 6.
2 Oil on canvas, 128 x 314, Madrid, Museo nacional del Prado, inv. no.
1665; see Balis 1986, no. 22, fig. 112. Rubens’ original oil sketch for the
Diana and Her Nymphs Attacked by Satyrs has not survived. For the series
as a whole, see Held 1980, pp. 305–312; and Balis 1986, pp. 218–264. The
commission is first mentioned on 22 June 1639, in a letter in which the
Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand informs his brother, King Philip IV, that the
paintings for the bóveda de palacio had been begun. Rubens’ oil sketches
for all the paintings had been completed by 22 July of that year, eight of
the large paintings based on these sketches were ready to be shipped by
10 January 1640, and the ten remaining ones followed after 20May 1640.
Seven sketches for this project have been preserved.
3 Oil on canvas, 125 x 320, Gerona, Museo Arqueólogico Provincial, inv.
no. 39-P; see Balis 1986, no. 25, fig. 124. Rubens’ oil sketch for this painting,
oil on oak, 23.2 x 52.6, is in Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of
Art, John G. Johnson Coll., inv. no. 2703; see Held 1980, I, no. 224; and
Balis 1986, no. 25a, fig. 122.
4 For Rubens’ oil sketch (Princeton, N. J., The Art Museum of Princeton
University) for the (lost) Death of Adonis, see Balis 1986, pp. 249–250, fig.
119.
5 Oil on canvas, 91 x 123, Stockholm, Bengt Rapp, 1962 (as Daniel Vertangen).
To judge from the photograph on file at the RKD, The Hague, this
was a rather dry, uninspired copy.
6 London, The National Gallery of Art, inv. no. 1871; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches
Museum; and Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst; see
Glück 1933, figs. 123 and 133.
7 Cf. Horace, Odes, III, 18, 1: “Faune, Nympharum fugientum amator”.
8 A copy of the Diana and Her Nymphs Attacked by Satyrs, possibly a studio
replica, is in Florence, Pitti Palace (oil on canvas, the orig. canvas c. 150 x
260 cm, inv. Palatina no. 141), very accurate except that it has been slightly
extended at the top. A series of four same-size copies of Rubens’ originals
– including the scene of Diana and her nymphs attacked by satyrs – are
preserved at Nîmes (Musée des Beaux-Arts). These were probably not
produced in Rubens’ studio. See Balis 1986, figs. 108, 113, 115.
According to Balis, a possible indication that copies after this late
hunting series were made in Rubens’ own studio is found in some items of
the accounts relating to his estate in 1645, which records the sale of
unfinished hunting pictures: “XLVI. Item vercocht aenden heer Commis
Maes, tot Brussel, de vier naevolgende stucken, noch nyet heel opgemaekt...
XLVII. Noch een Jachte van Satyrs ende nimphen, voor thien
ponden vlems, comt...60 -”. See P. Génard, “De nalatenschap van P. P.
Rubens”, p. 86, cited by Balis 1986, p. 230 n. 42.
9 Oil on wood, 100 x 120 cm, sale, London, Christie’s, 22 April 1998, lot 87
(as circle of Peter Paul Rubens). In the photographic archives of the
RKD, The Hague, the painting is ascribed to Frans Wouters.
10 For a discussion of these copies, with an attribution to Wouters, see Balis
1986, pp. 222, 245, 246 (under no. 23), 248 (under no. 24), 251, 252
(under no. 25), figs. 116, 125.
11 See Denucé 1932, p. 81; Balis 1986, p. 222; and Kemmer 1995, p. 232.
12 Oil on canvas, 86 x 91 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no.
GG 3683, see Kemmer 1995, pp. 237–238, 240, fig. 35.[End]

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