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Carved from white marble, a young woman holds a short spear by one side and looks down toward a dog standing by her other side in this free-standing sculpture. Her body faces us in this photograph, and her head is tipped forward and to our right. She has a straight, delicate nose, and her thin lips are parted, possibly in a slight smile. Her wavy hair is held back under a band with an ornament on the crown, and a long curl falls behind one shoulder. Her knee-length garment exposes one firm breast and half of the other. The drapery clings tightly to her body and legs so the folds accentuate her curves. A longer garment falls from her waist, behind her legs, to pool at her sandaled feet. She stands with her weight mostly on her left leg, to our right, and the other knee bent. She holds the shaft of the spear with her right hand, to our left. Her other arm is drawn across her body at waist level. With that hand, she loosely holds the dog’s leash, which then falls across her thighs to the dog, sitting at her feet to our right. The short haired, thin, muscular hound is seated so its chest squares toward us. It twists its head up to look at the woman, its nose pressed along her leg. Its mouth is open, and the tongue curls out over sharp teeth. The dog wears a snug, buckled collar. The woman and dog stand on a square platform of white marble resting on a slab veined with charcoal gray and black, against a smoke-gray wall.
National Gallery of Art · Sculpture
A Companion of Diana
Jean-Louis Lemoyne
- Date
- 1710-1724
- Medium
- marble
- Dimensions
- overall: 182.5 x 76.5 x 57.8 cm (71 7/8 x 30 1/8 x 22 3/4 in.)
- Classification
- Sculpture · Statue
- Accession number
- 1942.9.133
- Credit line
- Widener Collection
- Time span
- 1701 to 1725
- Department
- CSD
Subjects and terms
- French
- classical
- mythology
- French Sculpture of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
- Diana
Provenance
Château de la Muette, near Paris, until the late 19th century;[1] sold to (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London); Rodolphe Kann [d. 1905], Paris; (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold 20 November 1908 to Peter A.B. Widener, Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania;[2] inheritance from Estate of Peter A.B. Widener by gift through power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; gift 1942 to NGA. [1] The owner of the château when the sculpture was sold to Wildenstein was the comte de Franqueville. The early provenance is given in Marc Furcy-Raynaud, ed., _Inventaire des sculptures exécutées au XVIIIe siècle pour la direction des batiments du roi_, Paris, 1927: 179. [2] According to Widener card file in NGA curatorial records.
Inscription
on pedestal, proper right: j.L. LEMOYNE. PARiSiNVS. FECIT. / 1724
NGA object ID 1272. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.