Jacob van Oost the Elder (1601 - 1670)

DIANA THE HUNTRESS

 

Oil on canvas
Transferred from Chester Town Hall  1996.1
Re-framed with grant-aid from the North West Museums Service and the Grosvenor Museum Society

The Painting

Diana was the classical goddess of the moon, and wears a crescent over her brow.  She was also the goddess of hunting, and is shown with a falcon and javelin.  Her hounds run down the steps to join the hunt, which rushes across the avenue in the park.  This is a reference to the story of Actaeon, a young prince who accidentally stumbled across Diana as she bathed.  Outraged, the goddess turned him into a stag, which was pursued and torn to pieces by his own hounds.

The Artist

Jacob van Oost the Elder was a Flemish Baroque portrait and history painter.  Born in Bruges in 1601, he visited Italy, but returned to Bruges and became Dean of the Painters' Guild in 1633.  He was greatly influenced by Rubens the supreme master of the Flemish Baroque and by the Northern followers of Caravaggio.  The backgrounds of his pictures are generally embellished with architecture, and he painted numerous altarpieces for Flemish churches, particularly in Bruges, where he died in 1671.

There are only three other paintings by Van Oost in British public collections a "Holy Family" in the Ulster Museum in Belfast, and portraits in the National Gallery and the Courtauld Institute Gallery in London.  "Diana the Huntress" is his only mythological painting in Britain.

The Frame

The frame is an exact replica of a Dutch frame of 1676, which was made for a painting of very similar dimensions.  Although our picture of a similar date is Flemish, this type of frame was used in both countries at this time.  The black frame echoes the black archway within the painting, which enclosing the landscape view forms a frame within a frame.