The Hunt of Diana

The Hunt of Diana was executed in 1616-1617 by Domenichino and commissioned to him by his patron, Cardinal Pietro Aldrobrandini. However, the painting became a belonging of Cardinal Scipione Borghese when he took it by force from the artist’s study, depriving the original client, a nephew of Clement VIII, his main rival.

History

The story of this painting is unusual: Cardinal Aldobrandini commissioned it as a sequel to Titian’s Bacchanals which he had recently included in his collection. Domenichino’s skill in handling light helped take a fresh approach to the artwork.

Unlike Titian, the Emilian master wanted to get rid of explosive use of colour and movement.

Moreover, he concentrated on a serene contemplation of the beauty of females, animals, and the countryside.

Description

The subject is inspired by a passage from Virgil’s Aeneid (canto V, 485) and shows the archery competition between Aeneas’ friends. In his Diana, Domenichino revived antique topics and the embodiment of nymphs. From Virgil’s Aeneid, warriors are described competing in an archery contest and shooting a tree with their first arrow, a ribbon with their second, and a falling bird with their third. Most probably, it was Mons.

A significant theorist and adviser on iconography at the time, Giovanni Battista Aguchi, proposed the subject matter into the realm of the nymphs led by Diana. Also, the archery theme is used as a metaphor for intelligent arguments that hit the mark, which was important at the time, as the consecration of the “Dicerie sacre” by the poet Giovan Battista Marino to Pope Paul V indicates.

The sequence is transferred to the region of the disciples of the nymph Diana, the goddess of hunting, an idyllic and luminous environment representing the mythical Arcadia. Literary metaphors stem from Domenichino’s cultural involvement with G. B. Aguchi, the cardinal’s secretary and adviser to the artist in the concept of the work.

Presenting the play of the nymphs, the artist tried to paint a poetic and chronological narration of facts, raising the visual art over poetic art and, in general, breaking the limit traditionally established for various artistic forms; a topic that was widely discussed during the Baroque period. The pose and expression of “attachments” (feelings) on faces help explain the sequence of events, while the unbridled play is contained in classical equilibrium. A nymph holding a greyhound shows us what happens to two male figures hidden in the bushes on the right side of the canvas.

According to the myth, her terrible rage of Diana was unleashed against the hunter Actaeon, who, upon seeing her bathing, was turned into a stag and devoured by his dogs. One of the nymphs, immersed in water, gentle and sensual, looks at the viewer and connects the inner and outer spaces of the artwork; another attempt to overcome the limitations, which is also typical of Baroque art.

Analysis

Domenichino captured nature in precise compositions that prevail over the use of color. The artist used Venetian tones, with extraordinary passages from green to yellow, white to blue and different shades of purple. But what introduces a new chapter in the rendering of the atmosphere is its gradual and calculated changes in tone towards the pale blue mountains using thin glazing, which show a new interest in Leonardo’s aerial perspective theories (studied and trained by the Theatine monk Matteo Zaccolini, who taught Domenichino perspective in the 1620s).

Author: Domenichino

Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), known as Domenichino, was an Italian Baroque painter of the Bolognese School of painters. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, his paintings were considered second only to Raphael's, but in the mid-19th century, he fell from favor. He became famous as a Baroque classicist again only in the 20th century. His artworks are known for lucid and balanced compositions, sober expressions, and restrained figures' gestures.

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