Diana the Huntress

The mythological goddess of the hunt, Diana, reclines in a forest setting with her hunting dogs, Syrius and Phocion, observing a hunt underway in the middle ground below. Diana (or Artemis, in Greek mythology) was revered as an inaccessible maiden, an avid huntress, and the patroness of wild animals, forests, and hills. This painting was commissioned in about 1690 by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, the powerful nephew of Pope Alexander VIII. For several decades, Ottoboni was one of the great artistic patrons in Rome. Both of Diana's dogs are certainly individual portraits of household pets dear to the Cardinal. One wears the heraldic device of the Ottoboni family on his collar. The setting is in the Alban hills, an area about sixty miles from Rome.