The Louvre preempts three tapestries

13/10/23 - Acquisitions - Paris, Musée du Louvre - There is the charming detail of the squirting water in the centre of the composition: Diana splashes Actaeon to repel him (ill. 1). This reaction is well and truly specified by Ovid. The author of the Metamorphoses tells us that the goddess, surprised by the hunter as she was bathing, blushed to see herself thus exposed without veil to the gaze of a mortal and, finding herself without her bow, threw "a wave of vengeance" at Actaeon’s forehead, while her companions hurriedly surrounded her to hide her nakedness.
This furious, vain gesture is rarely depicted by artists, who prefer to convey more explicit modesty or fury, showing the goddess anxious to hide her body or already determined to punish the hunter and turn him into a stag; he was then devoured by his own dogs. What’s more, they usually place her on the banks of a river, surrounded by nymphs, whereas here she is behind a waterfall, actively defending herself while her desolate companions are thrown into the background.

1. Antwerp, mid 17th-century
Diana and Actaeon
Hanging from the Story of Diana
Wool and silk - 373 x 499 cm
Preempted by the Musée du Louvre on 10 October 2023
Photo: Giquello

See the image in its page

The relatively rare iconographic choices in this tapestry caught the attention of the Louvre. The museum preempted it in the sale of the Chevalier collection, organised at Drouot by Giquello et associés on 10 October (see the news item of 19/9/23), during which it was sold for 20,800 euros with costs.
The catalogue states that the piece is part of the History of Diana hanging, which was woven in Antwerp in the mid 17th-century. Another version was made in Brussels in the workshop of Andries van den Dries, and consisted of seven pieces, including The Rest of Diana and Diana and Callisto.
This acquisition is all the more interesting because, as the curators of the Objets d’art department point out, the story of…