Diana's bath with Actaeon and Callisto
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| Diana's bath with Actaeon and Callisto |
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| Rembrandt van Rijn , 1634 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 168 × 93.5 cm |
| Anholt Castle |
The Bath of Diana with Actaeon and Callisto is a painting by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn . The work, completed in 1634 and measuring 93.5 by 168 centimeters, has been in the collection of Prince zu Salm-Salm in the Anholt moated castle since 1966 .
The picture shows two independent stories from the Metamorphoses of Ovid : on the left half of the picture " Diana and Actaeon " and on the right "The discovery of the pregnancy of Callistus ". Both stories are about a transformation that is imposed by a goddess as punishment for a sexual offense:
- The hunter Aktäon is transformed into a deer by Diana (in Greek mythology Artemis ) because he has seen the chaste goddess naked. This process is illustrated in the picture, and the viewer knows that Actaeon will later be torn apart by his own dogs.
- Callisto , Diana's favorite nymph, is still before her metamorphosis; Her pregnancy is just being discovered by bathing nymphs who are tearing off her clothes (she had not been able to defend her promised chastity against Jupiter's ( Zeus ) desires). Here, too, the viewer knows that Juno ( Hera ) will soon turn Kallisto into a she-bear who is later almost killed by her own (now unborn) son Arkas.
The meaning of several details in the picture is unclear or the subject of art historical assumptions, speculations and theories: in the foreground is a nymph , whose advanced age is unusual for nymph depictions, and in the background you can see an aged couple who apparently do not belong to either of the two stories.
literature
- W. Busch: The chaste and unchaste seeing, Rembrandt's "Diana, Aktäon und Kallisto" , in: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte , Vol. 52, Munich 1989, pp. 257-277.
- S. Grohé: Rembrandts mythologische Historien , Cologne 1996, pp. 195–223. ( ISBN 3-412-09994-5 )
- C. Janicek: Rembrandt's "Bath of Diana with Actaeon and Callisto" , diploma thesis, University of Vienna, 2004.
- EJ Sluijter: De 'Heydensche Fabulen' in de Noordnederlandse Schilderkunst circa 1590–1670. Een proeve van beschrijving en interpretatie van schilderijen met verhalende onderwerpen uit de klassieke mythologie , dissertation, Leiden 1986.
- AW Vliegenthart, Some Remarks on Rembrandt's Aktäon und Kallisto , in: Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek , 23, 1972, pp. 85-94.