Landscape with Diana and Actaeon

Private collection

landscape

Ovid describes at length (Met. 3:138-253) how the young prince Actaeon, hunting in the forest, stumbled accidentally upon the grotto where Diana and her companion were bathing. To punish him for the glimpse of divine nudity, the goddess turned him into a stag.

About the Artist

Dirck van der Lisse

1607 – 1669

Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was a pupil of Cornelis van Poelenburgh c. 1630. In 1635 the Stadholder, Prince Frederik Hendrik of Orange Nassau, commissioned him, along with van Poelenburgh, Abraham Bloemaert and Herman Saftleven, to paint a cycle of scenes based on Giovanni Battista Guarini's Il pastor fido for the restored hunting castle at Honselaarsdijk. In 1639 van der Lisse moved to The Hague, where he was a founder-member of the painters' confraternity Pictura in 1656; he became Burgomaster of the city in 1660.

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