(Rome 1623–1694)
Landscape with Diana and her nymphs resting after the hunt,
signed with monogram lower centre: F. L.,
oil on paper laid down on canvas, 25.5 x 46 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, Villa Paolina, Rome, 1763;
art market, Germany;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Giancarlo Sestieri for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a digital photograph.

This elegant painting of horizontal format portrays Diana, goddess of hunting, surrounded by attendant nymphs. Some offer food and drink, others bustle with game and hounds. In the background, indistinct figures engaged in the pursuit of prey stand out against the backdrop of a calm sea that extends towards the horizon.

Filippo Lauri has inscribed his initials ‘FL’ onto the boulder in the lower centre of the painting, located under the small cascade. His output anticipated the eighteenth-century Arcadian taste, and he began his artistic education as a pupil of his father, the Flemish artist Balthasar Lauwers, followed by training in Rome under the tutelage of Angelo Caroselli and Pietro da Cortona. Lauri´s classicising landscapes with figures, such as the present work, shows the significant Emilian influence in Roman art derived from the works of Albani and Domenichino.

The figure of Diana, who is sensually reclining on top of the ancient ruins, is portrayed in a position often repeated by the painter. It can be compared, for example, to the young Venus and Cupid in a landscape painted on copper (45.5 x 40.5 cm) in Peckover House, Wisbech that also displays Lauri’s Cortonesque apprenticeship, and in the Satyr tied by two cherubs before Diana signed ‘FL 1671’, that was previously in the Bernheimer collection (Sotheby’s, 25 November 2015, lot 186). In terms of the painting’s format and composition, this work can be compared with the Bacchanal (43.8 x 70.5 cm), signed and dated ‘Filippo Lauro. F.1645’ (Sotheby’s, 6 July 2017, lot 151).