Diana and Her Companions [SEP] creator
Diana and Her Companions
Diana and Her Companions is a painting by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer completed in the early to mid-1650s, now at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. Although the exact year is unknown, the work may be the earliest painting of the artist still extant, with some art historians placing it before "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" and some after.
The painting's solemn mood is unusual for a scene depicting the goddess Diana, and the nymph washing the central figure's feet has
origin, with a strong possibility that the pigment came from the same batch used for Vermeer's "Diana and Her Companions". The use of a chalk ground is also typically Dutch, and there is an unusually extensive use of ultramarine, typical of Vermeer's later work, though not of "Diana and Her Companions" or "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary". Wheelock identifies stylistic similarities with two history paintings which are universally attributed to Vermeer. He also notes similarities between the depiction of the saint's