JORDAENS, Jacob
(b. 1593, Antwerpen, d. 1678, Antwerpen)

Diana and Actaeon

c. 1640
Oil on oak panel, 54 x 76 cm
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

In the years around 1640, the successful Antwerp artist Jordaens painted a number of works with mythological scenes that differed strongly from his previous production, both in terms of dimensions and the relationship between figures and landscapes. The present work uses the Antwerp cabinet-painting format, a comparatively small size of picture for Jordaens that follows in the tradition of Frans Francken II, Hendrick van Balen and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Diana and Actaeon is the first example in Jordaens's oeuvre in which landscape came to assume an importance of its own, becoming as significant in the painting as the historical scene with its small-scale, almost incidental figures. This painting must be seen as one of the most important examples of this group.

Fully in keeping with Ovid (Metamorphoses, III, 138-252), the hunter, who is on the left, carrying a spear and followed by his dogs, is dressed to great effect in a length of red cloth. Separated by no more than a narrow stretch of water flowing along the lower edge of the painting we see the naked figures of Diana and her companions, almost in a direct line before the hunter and seemingly lined up for the viewer. The blatant nudity of these delightful, voluptuous women departs strangely from Ovid's descriptions, in which, upon their discovery by Actaeon, the surprised nymphs try to cover and hide themselves.

In Jordaens's composition, Diana and her companions seem to have frozen somewhat half-heartedly into droll poses; after all, the depiction of the undraped female body was the major reason for the artist's choice of this subject. So Jordaens makes the most of his opportunity, and depicts the women caught performing their post-hunt ablutions in ten different positions, some curiously bent, some standing, and some crouching. With this group Jordaens demonstrates his prowess in painting the nude.