Nudes in a Landscape (possibly Diana and Callisto)

In this drawing, the Amsterdam painter Cornelis van Poelenburch combined a loose, monochromatic ink wash landscape with red chalk figures in the foreground. The figures depict the story of Diana and Callisto, when Callisto’s pregnancy with Jupiter's child is revealed to the chaste goddess of the hunt Diana. Van Poelenburch began to draw with red chalk during a journey to Italy, where it was a more common artist’s medium than in the Netherlands. Back in Amsterdam, he kept red chalk as part of his practice, perhaps to call attention to his Italian sojourn.