Diana returning from the Hunt

Nothing has happened yet. The dogs are still gathered, one of the nymphs is sounding a hunting horn, and Diana stands in the middle with the crescent moon at her forehead, so the chase is about to start rather than ending. The painting came to Spain in a shipment of 26 Flemish pictures meant for the queen's tower in the old Alcazar palace in Madrid, and the inventory of 1636 records them there, moved out of that tower on the king's orders to a room downstairs. Who ordered them from Flanders in the first place is not known. A payment authorised by Queen Isabel de Borbón in 1623 for works arriving from Flanders is the only document anywhere near it. The Prado gives the picture to Rubens's workshop on the quality of the painting, and its curator of Flemish art, Alejandro Vergara, has suggested the dogs may be by the animal painter Paul de Vos.