Diana

This statuette was first exhibited at the Kortrijk Salon of 1896, where it was listed in the catalogue as Diane, statuette ivoire. The following year it was in the small Antwerp Salon, but now with the title Diane chasseresse - Diana jageres, which is where the museum bought it. Josuë Dupon, who had already built up a reputation as an…

This statuette was first exhibited at the Kortrijk Salon of 1896, where it was listed in the catalogue as Diane, statuette ivoire. The following year it was in the small Antwerp Salon, but now with the title Diane chasseresse - Diana jageres, which is where the museum bought it. Josuë Dupon, who had already built up a reputation as an animalier or animal sculptor and had mastered the technique of ivory carving, chose a subject from Graeco-Roman mythology. Diana, Artemis in Greek, was the virgin goddess of the hunt, and the strict and athletic personification of chastity. The artist has let a fresh wind blow through the classical idiom. He has depicted the goddess as an elegant female nude, as decorative as an ornament. Dupon captures his heroine in athletic action. Her body is tensed in a vertical movement, and with her bow still raised Diana watches the arrow speeding through the sky. She is standing on the skull of an elk, between its broad, upright antlers, her quiver within arm’s reach. The crescent moon on her diadem had been her attribute as moon goddess since classical times (but it is missing, having vanished without trace in the 1980s). Dupon made his statuette with the most precious materials: ivory combined with bronze, gilt brass and precious stones. It stands on a costly base of onyx resting supported by a bronze pedestal. The subject of Diana is illuminated further on the pedestal, where four small reliefs illustrate aspects of the versatile goddess: resting with a deer, after bathing, reclining with the crescent moon, and with a monster. Diana is a superb specimen of chryselephantine sculpture, a branch of art that produced several masterpieces at the end of the 19th century. The term comes from the classical Greek words chrusos and elephantinos, meaning ‘golden’ and ‘ivory’ respectively. This work was not a try-out for Dupon. He had already exhibited ivories at the World’s Fair in 1894. He belonged to a select group of sculptors who were encouraged by King Leopold II and Secretary of State Edmond Van Eetvelde to work with elephant tusks from the Congo Free State. Diana became a sought-after work of art, and Dupon made several versions of her. An identical second one was shown at the major international exhibition of 1897 in Brussels, in the colonial section organised in Tervuren to the greater honour and glory of Leopold II and his crown domains. In the prestigious Salon of Honour, where the finest works of Belgian chryselephantine sculpture were on display, Dupon’s Diana reigned supreme in an exuberantly decorated display cabinet. Her present whereabouts are unknown, but in 1967 she still belonged to the Misses Dupon, the artists’ two daughters. After the death of the last surviving one he statuette was offered for sale in 1986. The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona has a third version that was bought in 1898 at the fourth Exposició de Belles Arts i Indústries Artístiques.