Episodes From The Myth Of Diana, workshop of Bon Boullogne (1649 - 1717)

Bon Boullogne (Paris, 1649 - Paris, 1717) workshop of
Episodes from the myth of Diana

oil painting on canvas
Dimensions: 84 x 114 cm.
with antique frame 100 x 132 cm.

The beautiful painting proposed shows a series of episodes taken from the myth of the divinity Diana, the Roman divinity of hunting, forests and wild animals, masterfully captured in this valuable painting, which shows a luxuriant wood, a favorite place of the divinity, as a theater of his adventures.

The composition opens, on the left, with a sort of presentation of the divinity, portrayed as an attractive young girl, surrounded by her faithful Nymphs, one of whom holds her quiver with arrows, and by one of her beloved dogs. hunting her.

The 'story' continues in the central part where we can see the divinity during a wild boar hunt, always with the goddess preparing to shoot a trail against a wild boar.

The other two scenes instead concern Diana's love life, in particular with Orion, a talented hunter with whom the divinity fell in love. The scene could represent a moment of intimacy between the two, interrupted by a curious satyr, surprised and punished by Orion himself with the help of a nymph.

To conclude, the author wanted to represent the tragic moment in which the goddess cries over the body of the beloved lying on the ground, killed by mistake by an arrow shot by Diana herself, the result of the trap hatched by the jealous brother Apollo, disappointed by the love that his sister felt for a mortal. Here we see Diana averting in vain Aesculapius, a divinity capable of resurrecting the dead, of reviving Orion as a young man, who instead will be transformed by Zeus into the constellation of the same name.

The painting is to be ascribed to the workshop of the painter Bon Boullogne (Paris, 1649 - Paris, 1717), an exemplary exponent of French painting of the second half of the seventeenth century and member of a dynasty of painters (he was the son of the painter Louis Boullogne, and brother of Louis, Geneviève and Madeleine, all active in their father's workshop), famous for their mythological compositions.

His stay in Rome, from 1670 to 1675, at the French Academy paid by Louis XIV, served to the painter to study the great Italian authors, shaping a style that on his return to Paris would make him extremely in demand with his painting of great decoration, suitable, then as now, to embellish high-level bourgeois residences.

In fact, in the canvas in question we find all the typical components of the whimsical French master, elaborated starting from most of the Italian painting of the 1600s, especially Roman and Bolognese, looking at the ways of the Carracci and Correggio, with a direct ancestry in particular from Domenichino (remember Diana's hunt in the Borghese Gallery), while the chromatic timbre of the entire composition is affected by the light and luminous tones of Reni, Maratti and Albani. The great tradition of early Roman Baroque painting is relived by Boullogne on a cultural basis that does not neglect even the influence of Nicolas Poussin.

The canvas is in a good state of conservation with the presence of several restoration points and a superficial oxidation layer.

The published photographs were made using a professional light so it is possible that the painting will be slightly darker if not adequately lit.

The work is accompanied by a beautiful gold frame, ancient but not contemporary.