Diana and Actaeon

The present work is a copy by the landscapist Jan van Bloemen and a figurative painter, possibly Giuseppe Chiari, after an original composition by Carlo Maratta and Gaspard Dughet in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth (77 x 57 in.). It is interesting to observe how in the original composition Maratta has taken many of the figures from well-known paintings by other artists: both Diana and the fleeing Actaeon, along with a number of the nymphs, are derived from Francesco Albani's treatment of the same subject in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden (dated to circa 1638-40), while the nymph in the left foreground is a direct quotation from Domenichino's 1616-17 masterpiece, Diana with nymphs at play, in the Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Other versions of the Chatsworth prototype are known: a copy is recorded in the collection of Francis Collins Esq., London, in 1961, with an attribution to Jan van Bloemen and Giuseppe Chiari (see M. Boisclair Gaspard Dughet: Sa vie et son oeuvre (1615-1675), Paris, 1986, pp. 223-224). This may in fact be the same painting as that offered at Sotheby's, London, 6 December 1967, lot 41, as Gaspard Poussin and C. Maratta (78½ x 57½ in.). Private correspondence supplied by the present owners records another version in a private collection, Genoa, also measuring 78½ x 57½ in.. Given the uniformity of the dimensions of both the prototype and the versions listed, it seems likely that the present work, which has been cut along the upper edge, was originally of the same size.