(Antwerp circa 1555 – circa 1585)
Diana and her Nymphs,
oil on panel, stamped on the reverse with the clover leaf of the panel maker Michel Claessens (1590–1637), 96 x 124 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, France

The present enticing composition, with statuesque nude forms, serpentine trees and antique ruins behind, is a typically vivid depiction of a mythological scene from the workshop of the enigmatic Antwerp Mannerist master Jacob de Backer. On the far right, along the forest track a hunter can be seen with his hounds, identifying this scene as Diana and her Nymphs as the moment before the hunter, Acteon is turned into a stag by the goddess of hunting for his voyeurism, having him hunted and ripped apart by his own hounds, as recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Little is known of de Backer’s life. It is assumed that he was born around 1555 and died circa 1585. He was one of the most important Mannerist masters in sixteenth-century Antwerp and occupies a firm position between the generations of Frans Floris and Rubens. He was active during the 1570s and the first part of the 1580s. Despite the fact that he presumably died early at about 30 years of age, he was very prolific. Karel van Mander, the indispensable source regarding sixteenth-century painting, relates in his Schilderboeck, published in Haarlem in 1604, fols. 231/232, that de Backer was abandoned as a young boy by his father, also a painter, who had to flee Antwerp because of an impending court trial. According to van Mander the young Jacob de Backer worked for a number of years in the studio of the painter and picture dealer of Italian origin known as Antonio van Palermo (1503/13 – before 1589). He later entered the workshop of Hendrick van Steenwijck the Elder (1550–1603). Van Mander claims that Palermo pushed him so hard that the young de Backer died in the arms of his master’s daughter at the age of thirty.