Object details
Accession number
S11w7
Primary Creator
Paul Manship
(Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1885 - 1966, New York)
Full title
Diana
Creation Date
1921
Provenance
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the artist through the art gallery Scott & Fowles, New York, on 8 December 1921 for $1620.
Marks
Inscribed (lower left petal): No. 4
Signed and dated (lower right petal): Paul Manship 1921 ©
Inscribed (lowest step of base): Roman Bronze Works N-Y
Dimensions
96.2 x 62.2 x 27 cm (37 7/8 x 24 1/2 x 10 5/8 in.)
Display Media
Bronze
Web Commentary
This sculpture illustrates part of the story of Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt and the hunter Acteon. Acteon surprised Diana while she was bathing and to punish him for seeing her nude, the goddess shoots him with an arrow that turns him into a stag. Here, Diana is seen leaping through the air in the moment immediately after she has released the arrow from her bow.
Permanent Gallery Location
Macknight Room
Bibliography
Paul Vitry. Paul Manship, Sculpteur Américain (Paris, 1927).Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), pp. 68-69. (fourth of twelve casts made from mold executed in 1920)Rollin Hadley. “Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 8, no. 15 (13 Dec. 1964), p. 2. Clara Strauss. “Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 8, no. 38 (23 May 1965), p. 2. (executed in 1920)Walter Hancock. “Paul Manship.” Fenway Court (Oct. 1966), pp. 2-3, ill. 2. (preparatory sketches from 1917, bronze executed in 1920 in three sizes)Cornelius C. Vermeule III et al. Sculpture in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1977), pp. 165-66, no. 210. (fourth of twelve casts made in 1921)Rollin van N. Hadley. Museums Discovered: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1981), pp. 192-93.Susan Rather. Archaism, Modernism, and the Art of Paul Manship (Austin, 1993), p. 160.Hilliard Goldfarb et al. Passionate Acts in Greek Art and Myth. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1994), pp. 44-45.
Rights and reproductions
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