Diana Sleeping After the Hunt
Carel de Moor
(Leiden 1655 – Warmond 1738)

1698
oil on canvas
158.4 x 145.7 cm
Signed on the stone ledge: “C De Moor” and on
the stone in front of the ledge “Ft 1698”
CM-101© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. and Pamela Fowler. “Diana Sleeping After the Hunt” (2024). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue,4th ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Elizabeth Nogrady with Caroline Van Cauwenberge. New York, 2023–.
https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/diana-sleeping-after-the-hunt/ (accessed February 2024).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

Carel de Moor’s name may not be widely recognized today, but during his lifetime

Comparative Figures

this Leiden master was highly respected and praised for his portraits, genre scenes,
and history paintings.[1] Although many of his most significant paintings have been
lost, his masterpiece, Diana Sleeping after the Hunt, has fortunately been preserved.
The work’s outstanding qualities offer a glimpse of why Carel de Moor (1655–1738)
was held in such high esteem throughout his long and distinguished career.[2]Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719), who befriended De Moor in the mid to late 1670s
when the artist came to Dordrecht and spent time with Godefridus Schalcken(1643–1706), is the primary source for information about De Moor. According toHoubraken, De Moor demonstrated such a great love of drawing as a young man inLeiden that his father, an art dealer, sent him to learn the rules of art from theillustrious Leiden master Gerrit Dou (1613–75). Subsequently, De Moor went toAmsterdam to study with Abraham van den Tempel (1622/23–72), with whom hetrained in making portraits and large-scale history paintings. Houbraken writes thatFig 1. Frans van Mieris, Woman and aProcuress (Bathsheba), 1671, oil onpanel, 29.5 x 24 cm, StaatlicheKunstsammlungen, Dresden, inv. no.
1742, © Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister,Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

after Van den Tempel’s death, De Moor returned to Leiden to study with Frans vanMieris (1635–81) and then continued his training under Schalcken in Dordrecht. DeMoor’s decision to study with Schalcken puzzled Houbraken, who wrote that by then
De Moor “already understood the art of drawing better than Schalcken, unless he only
did it to copy his flattering brush [for which he is famous] in his handling.”[3] Since
De Moor’s first signed painting is dated 1674, it is possible that the young artist
worked alongside Schalcken as an established master rather than as an apprentice.
Drawing on the varied skills he acquired during his artistic training, De Moor
embarked upon a career that included portraiture, genre scenes, and history paintings,© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Diana Sleeping After the Hunt
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the most important of which is Diana Sleeping after the Hunt. This large and imposing
canvas portrays the beautiful goddess Diana, identified by the crescent moon
decorating her headband, as she sleeps while seated in a wooded glade, her faithfulFig 2. Godefridus Schalcken, Diana
and Her Nymphs in a Clearing, ca.
1685–92, oil on canvas, 82.6 x 66.4
cm, The Leiden Collection, NewYork, inv. no. GS-111.

dog lying nestled on her lap. Diana, known as goddess of the hunt as well as goddessof the moon, is resting after a particularly successful outing. In the distant landscape,a hound and three female figures, one of whom wears a white dress and blue shawl
that correspond to the goddess’s outfit, chase a deer, alluding to the earlier hunt.
Hanging from a tree, next to Diana’s hunting horn and quiver of arrows, is the gameshe has slain through her unerring aim: a plump partridge; a peacock with anenormous tail of iridescent eyes that shimmer in the evening light; and a deer, its
upper body splayed lifelessly on the ground nearby.
Despite the visual focus on Diana’s prowess as a hunter, the mood of De Moor’s large
mythological scene is more sensual than triumphant. Diana’s gold-trimmed, whitesatin garment and blue robe have fallen off her shoulders, revealing her fair skin andbreasts. Flowers adorn her hair, while a pink rose, symbolizing love, lies on the ledge
where she sits. A putto hovering above Diana aims an arrow at the famously chaste
goddess, while another cherub gazes upward to witness this evocative and poignant
moment that will ensure that Diana’s dreams are sweetened with feelings of love.

Fig 3. Gerard de Lairesse, Selene andEndymion, ca. 1680, oil on canvas, 177
x 118.5 cm, Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam, inv. no. SK-A-4210.

The conception and execution of this inspired composition bring together the wide
range of imagery and techniques De Moor had studied. His exquisitely detailed
rendering of the peacock’s tail, the partridge’s feathers, and the deer’s fur all reflect
the refined, detailed manner of the Leiden fijnschilders—which he would havelearned from Dou and Van Mieris. De Moor even based Diana’s pose on a figure in
Van Mieris’s Woman and a Procuress (fig 1), a painting he likely copied when he waswith that master.[4] The soft and flowing way De Moor rendered the fabrics in Diana’s
garments likely stems from his experiences in Van den Tempel’s workshop. De MoorFig 4. Benedetto Gennari II, Diana
and Endymion, 1673, oil on canvas,
177 x 225 cm, private collection.

was also evidently familiar with Schalcken’s expressive mythological scenes,
particularly those featuring Diana in a landscape setting. For example, Schalcken’s
Diana and Her Nymphs in a Clearing in The Leiden Collection (fig 2) includes smallscale figures in the distant background (among them Diana, if one is to judge fromthe orange robes of one of the nymphs), much like those in De Moor’s Diana Sleeping
after the Hunt. Schalcken, like De Moor, studied with Dou, who frequently inserted
similar vignettes into the background of his own works.
Aside from the influence of these masters, the inspiration of Gerard de Lairesse(1641–1711), the preeminent Classicist in Amsterdam in the late 1660s and 1670s, isprofoundly important for the visual power and enormous scale of Diana Sleeping after
the Hunt. De Moor would have encountered De Lairesse when he was in Amsterdam
training in the studio of Van den Tempel. De Lairesse’s paintings, particularly his© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Diana Sleeping After the Hunt
Page 4 of 8large allegorical and mythological subjects, were highly regarded by wealthy
Amsterdam merchants as well as by courtly patrons across Europe—which provided
ample reason for De Moor to emulate that particular master’s manner of painting. The
connections between De Moor’s Diana Sleeping after the Hunt and De Lairesse’s
Selene and Endymion from ca. 1680 (fig 3) are both thematic and visual, as in thesimilarity between Diana’s body type and idealized facial features and those ofSelene, Greek goddess of the night.
The mythological stories of Selene and Diana, respectively the Greek and Romangoddesses of the moon, and the shepherd Endymion, a virtuous mortal and symbol oftimeless beauty, are closely intertwined and essentially the same. Selene, like Diana,
fell in love with Endymion, and each night she came down from her chariot to watch
or kiss her beloved as he slept.[5] In the Roman version of the myth, Endymion was
not conscious of Diana’s love and slept without ever growing a day older.[6] De
Lairesse emphasized the theme of love in Selene and Endymion through the figure ofCupid, who not only holds a burning torch but also points to the sleeping shepherd.
As noted by Dirk Snoep, the theme of De Lairesse’s painting represents a distinctive
type of history painting: namely, a moralizing fable that served as an exemplar of
divine virtue.[7] This myth, whether featuring Selene or Diana, was popular in the lateseventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in European courts. De Lairesse, forexample, painted Selene and Endymion for Mary Stuart shortly after her marriage tothe Stadholder William III in 1677. The painting hung as a chimneypiece in Mary
Stuart’s bedroom in their country residence in Soestdijk.[8] Similarly, Benedetto
Gennari (1633–1715) presented his Diana and Endymion (fig 4) to the English
monarch Charles II in 1674, the very year that Gennari was named Court Painter.
Much like De Moor’s Diana Sleeping after the Hunt, Gennari’s painting includes thefigure of Cupid shooting an arrow at Diana to introduce the concept of love into thepictorial narrative.[9] Depictions of Cupid shooting an arrow at Diana occur in several
other renderings of Diana and Endymion from the late seventeenth and earlyeighteenth centuries.[10] This motif specifically connects De Moor’s painting to thestory of Diana and Endymion—the only instance in classical mythology wherematters of love are associated with this famously chaste goddess.
De Moor’s interpretation of the narrative is strikingly different from all other known
examples: it is the only depiction of Diana as quietly asleep while Endymion is not
physically present. In his entirely unique version of the mythological story, De Moor
evocatively weaves associations of sleep and love into the tale of Diana andEndymion. His sole focus on Diana notably sidesteps the theme of unrequited lovethat is inevitable in portrayals of the goddess alongside the sleeping shepherd.[11]Similar to De Lairesse’s Selene and Endymion, De Moor’s Diana Sleeping after the© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Diana Sleeping After the HuntPage 5 of 8

Hunt celebrates Diana as an exemplum virtutis (example of virtue), which makes itlikely that he painted this carefully executed and large work for an elite patron. Aswith De Lairesse’s Selene and Endymion, one wonders whether De Moor’s painting
was likewise intended to be displayed in a bedroom.[12]The first mention of Diana Sleeping after the Hunt is presumably the large painting byDe Moor that appeared in an auction held in Frankfurt on January 19, 1763.[13] The
description of the work (“Life-sized Diana asleep in a beautiful landscape, beautifullypainted”), as well as its dimensions, are both comparable to those of the canvas nowin The Leiden Collection. The probable identification of the painting in the Frankfurt
auction with Diana Sleeping after the Hunt suggests that De Moor executed it for aGerman noble. Subsequent to this sale, the painting came into the possession of theimportant collector and former mayor of Leiden Johan van der Marck (1707–72),
who also owned at least twenty-one other works by the artist.[14] De Moor’s reputation
waned after the eighteenth century, as is evident in the comparatively low sales pricefor this work when it was auctioned in Amsterdam in 1817.[15] In the next knownreference to Diana Sleeping after the Hunt, the painting reappeared in an auction in
Zurich in 2008, when it was purchased by the New York dealer Otto Naumann. The
present collector acquired the work from Naumann in that year. Fortunately, despite
the long gap in the painting’s provenance, Diana Sleeping after the Hunt has been wellcared for over the years, and this masterpiece has come down to us today in excellent
condition.

- Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Pamela Fowler, 2024

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Diana Sleeping After the Hunt
Page 6 of 8Endnotes
1. We would like to thank Elizabeth Nogrady and Caroline van Cauwenberge for their thoughtfulcomments on earlier drafts of this entry.
2. For more information about De Moor’s life and career, see his biography in this catalogue. De Moor’s
earliest biographers, Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en
schilderessen (Amsterdam, 1718–21; rev. ed., The Hague, 1753; reprint, 1980), 3: 342–48; Jacob Campo
Weyerman, De levens- beschryvingen der Nederlantsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen (TheHague, 1729), 4: 7–8; and Johan van Gool, De nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche Kunstschilders en
Schilderessen: Waer in de Levens- en Kunstbedryven der tans levende en reets overleedene Schilders, dievan Houbraken, noch eenig ander Schryver, zyn aengeteekend, verhaelt worden (The Hague, 1751), 2:
424–25, all expressed their admiration for De Moor. For example, Van Gool wrote: “dat onze Kunsthelt,
by onpartydige Kenners, voor een Hoogvlieger in de Kunst te boek staet, en een der grootste Meesters isgeweest, die in Nederlant gebloeit hebben” (that our Art Hero [is] a Highflyer in Art, and one of thegreatest masters who flourished in the Netherlands).
3. De Moor “aangezien toemaals de Tekenkonst al vry beter verstont dan Schalken, ten ware hy het alleen
gedaan hebbe om zyn vleyend penceel (waar door hy berucht is) in zyne behandeling af te zien.” ArnoldHoubraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam, 1721),
3: 274; translation: Hendrik J. Horn and Rieke van Leeuwen, Houbraken Translated: Arnold Houbraken’s
Great Theatre of the Netherlandish Painters and Paintresses, RKD Studies (The Hague, 2021), 3: 344,
https://houbraken-translated.rkdstudies.nl/3-300-359/page-340-349/. For an interpretation of thispassage, see Pamela Fowler and Piet Bakker, Carel de Moor (1655–1738): His Life and Work, aCatalogue Raisonné (Leiden, 2024), 22–23.
4. This observation was made by Pamela Fowler. In 1972, one of the six known copies made after Van
Mieris’s Young Woman with a Procuress was with Galerie Sanct Lucas, Vienna, and bore a De Moorsignature. See Otto Naumann, Frans van Mieris (1635–1681) the Elder (Doornspijk, 1981), 2: 99–100.
5. The story of Selene, which is found in Ovid’s Ars Armandi, is described in the following manner byWilliam Sherwood Fox, Greek and Roman Mythology (Boston, 1928), 245: “One night Selene (thegoddess of the moon, Latin, Luna) looked down from the clear heavens upon the young Endymion, theson of Aëthlios, as he was sleeping near his flocks on the slopes of Mount Latmos in Karia, and at thesight of his beauty a wave of affection rose in her heart, which her will was unable to stem. Coming
down from heaven, she stooped and kissed him and then lingered near him till dawn as he slept on,
repeating these visits night after night until her absences excited suspicion among her divine
companions. When at length the cause of them became known, Zeus gave Endymion the choice between
death and an endless sleep, and, choosing the latter, he may still be found asleep on the mountainside,
visited each night by his pale lover, who keeps careful watch over his flocks.”
6. In the Roman myth, the love between Diana and Endymion was never consummated. Diana was a virgin© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Diana Sleeping After the Hunt
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goddess in Roman mythology, sharing attributes with both Selene and Artemis (the famously chaste
Greek goddess of the hunt).
7. Dirk Snoep, in Gods, Saints and Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt, ed. Albert Blankert etal. (Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts; Amsterdam,Rijksmuseum) (Washington, D.C., 1980), 242. Snoep notes that De Lairesse’s interpretation of the story
is reflected in the inscription on an etching he made of the same subject, which reads: “Nil amore divino
praestantius” (Nothing is more excellent than love like that of a deity).
8. Dirk Snoep, “Gerard de Lairesse als plafond-en kamerschilder,” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 18 (1970):
198.
9. While it is unlikely that De Moor knew this specific example, the motif was one that was current indepictions of Diana and Endymion at that time.
10. See, in particular, Francesco Solimena, Diana and Endymion, ca. 1705–10 (Walker Art Gallery,Liverpool).
11. Many theories exist about the implications of this mythological story of Selene/Diana and Endymion,some of which may be pertinent to De Moor’s unique interpretation of the story. See, for example, those
discussed by Francis H. Dowley, “The Iconography of Poussin’s Painting Representing Diana andEndymion,”

JournaloftheWarburg

andCourtauld

Institutes

36(1973):

305–18,https://doi.org/10.2307/751167. Until more is known about the circumstance in which De Moor
executed this painting, these questions must remain unanswered.
12. We would like to thank Elizabeth Nogrady for this suggestion.
13. Sale, Juncker Kaller, Frankfurt, 19 January 1763, no. 5 (160 x 149.9 cm), “Diane de grandeur naturelle
endormie dans un beau paysage, admirablement bien peinte,” [sold for 80 ½ florins].
14. For Johan van der Marck’s posthumous sale of paintings, see Amsterdam (De Winter & Yver), 25
August 1773, no. 211 [sold for 339 florins to Delfos] (Lugt 2189). In addition to De Moor’s Diana
Sleeping after the Hunt, sixteen other paintings by the artist were offered for sale at this auction—five of
those offered are still known, along with two others possibly from the sale.
15. The painting sold for 339 florins in the Van der Marck auction in 1773 and for 104 florins in the Anna
Sautyn sale in Amsterdam in 1817. See Provenance.

ProvenancePossible sale, Juncker Kaller, Frankfurt, 19 January 1763, no. 5 [sold for 80 ½ florins].
Johan van der Marck Aegidiusz. (1707–72), Leiden (his sale, De Winter & Yver, Amsterdam, 25
August 1773, no. 211 [to Delfos for 339 florins]).
Anna Sautyn (her sale, Twisk, Amsterdam, 21 October 1817, no. 9 [to V. Ebbing for 104 florins]).
© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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Private collection, Lucerne, Switzerland, by 1958.
(Sale, Koller, Zurich, 19 September 2008, no. 3050 [to Otto Naumann Ltd.].)[Otto Naumann Ltd., New York.]
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2008.

Exhibition History
Amsterdam, Hermitage Amsterdam, Rembrandt and His Contemporaries: History Paintings from The
Leiden Collection, 4 February–27 August 2023, no. 30 [lent by the present owner].

References
Van Eijnden, Roeland, and Adriaan van der Willigen. Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst,
sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw. Haarlem, 1840, 4: 154.
Lunsingh Scheurleer, Theodoor Hermann, Cornelia Willemijn Fock, and A.J. van Dissel, eds. Het
Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht. Vol. 2, De Paplepel. Leiden, 1987, 101.
Van der Hut, Margreet. Barend Graat (1628–1709): Zijn leven en werk. Leiden, 2015, 156.
Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. “Carel de Moor, Diana Sleeping after the Hunt.” In Rembrandt and His
Contemporaries: History Paintings from The Leiden Collection. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. andCaroline Van Cauwenberge, 136–37, no. 30. Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Hermitage Amsterdam. Zwolle,
2023. [Exhibition catalogue also published in Dutch.]
Fowler, Pamela, and Piet Bakker. Carel de Moor (1655–1738): His Life and Work, a Catalogue
Raisonné. Leiden, 2024.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection