Diana at the Hunt - Diana and Her Nymphs on the Point of Leaving

Around 1623 two of the busiest workshops in Antwerp were run by friends who liked to work on the same panel. Peter Paul Rubens painted the figures here, Diana and her nymphs gathering their spears and horns at dawn, while Jan Brueghel the Elder filled in the wood behind them, the hounds straining at the leash and the birds already taken. They collaborated like this for years, each doing what he did best, neither signing over the other. The subject suited a partnership. Here is the goddess of the hunt caught in the pause before the chase, still among her women, the dogs the only thing in the scene that seems to know what is coming. It hangs now in a Paris museum devoted entirely to hunting and nature.