Diana and her Nymphs Hunting

This is a strip of oak about 28 centimetres high and twice as wide, and the composition runs along it like a frieze. Diana, identified by the crescent moon on her head, drives deer with spears and dogs, her nymphs around her. Rubens painted panels like this quickly, as designs from which an assistant would work up the full-size canvas, and the speed is visible in the paint. The ground is laid on in streaks left showing through the thin transparent layers above, the figures are drawn round with black brush lines, and the forms are picked out in thicker grey, red and white. About 50 of these small panels survive from the set he supplied for Philip IV's hunting lodge outside Madrid, and this is among the largest. In the later 18th century 45 of the sketches were together in the collection of the Duke of Infantado. Ten of them are in the Prado today.