Diana and her Companions

Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, has stopped to rest with her nymphs inside a great cave. Her bow and quiver lie on the ground in front, a hunting dog waits nearby, and through the mouth of the grotto the view opens onto bright hills where more of her companions bathe beside a fountain.

Caves like this were a speciality in Utrecht, where such pictures were called grotjes, little grottoes, and they turn up often in Dutch household inventories of the period. Apart from Abraham van Cuylenborch, only a couple of Utrecht painters, Dirck Stoop and Carel de Hooch, made comparable cave scenes. He signed this panel at the bottom centre, with the letters AVC joined together before his surname, and left it undated. The painting belongs to the Mauritshuis, which acquired it some time after 1817, and hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V in The Hague.