Lot 16: Diana and her maidens, after the hunt

Hendrik van Balen I (Antwerp 1574/5-1632) and Abraham Govaerts (Antwerp 1589-1626) Diana and her maidens, after the hunt signed and dated 'H. V. BALEN ET. A. GOVART / 1626' (lower left) oil on oak panel 21½ x 30½ in. (54.4 x 77.5 cm.)

54.4 x 77.5 cm.

U. Härting, K. Borms, Abraham Govaert: Der Waldmaler (1589-1626), Habichtswald, 2002, pp. 35-6, 86 and 111, no. 24, fig. 25, pl. 24. B. Werche, Hendrick van Balen (1575-1632): Ein Antwerpener Kabinettbildmaler der Rubenszeit, Turnhout, 2004, I, p. 168, no. A87; II, p. 375.

Adolf Bäuerle, Vienna; his sale, Vienna, 17 January 1876, lot 7, as ‘Brueghel and van Balen’. Dr. Norbert and Serafine Klinger, Vienna; forcibly sold following the Anschluss, after March 1938, to Pieter Jahn; Lempertz, Cologne, 7-9 May 1941, lot 156. Private collection, Vienna. Anonymous sale; Dorotheum, Vienna, 12 March 1998, lot 96 (ATS 1,500,000). with Galerie Sanct Lucas, Vienna, 1998. Private collection, California. Anonymous sale; Christie’s, London, 12 December 2001, lot 16. with Johnny van Haeften, London, when acquired by present owner in 2003. Restituted to the heirs of Dr. Norbert and Serafine Klinger, 2015. The present work is being offered for sale pursuant to an agreement between the consignor and the heirs of Dr Norbert and Serafine Klinger. This resolves any dispute over ownership of the work and title will pass to the buyer.

This elegant cabinet picture depicts the goddess Diana resting in an idyllic wooded landscape after returning from a hunt. In a graceful gesture, she picks fruit from a basket held by a young attendant, while her maidens present her with the day’s game. The image of Diana as an allegory of hunting, surrounded by its trappings, may originate in a print of 1597 entitled Venatio, made after a drawing by Jan van der Straet, also called Stradanus, a student of Giorgio Vasari. The theme of the hunting goddess became increasingly popular as a subject for pictures in the Netherlands at the turn of the seventeenth century, with hunting being then the aristocratic pastime par excellence. It also provided a noble pretext to display attractive female nudes in idyllic landscapes. The result of a collaborative endeavour, this picture combines Hendrik van Balen’s alluring draped figures with Abraham Govaerts’s carefully-rendered landscape. A friend of both Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, with whom he also collaborated, van Balen was a prominent member of the thriving Antwerp artistic community during the first half of the seventeenth century. Reputed for his brightly attired and fleshy nudes, he was head dean of the painters’ guild in 1609 and in the same year became the young Anthony van Dyck’s teacher. A gifted landscape painter, Govaerts demonstrates his ability at depicting fine details in the grassy patch to the right foreground where each flower – the myosotis, iris and lily of the valley – is depicted with a miniaturist touch.