Lot 43: FERNAND HERTENBERGER

THE GODDESS DIANA
signed Fernand Hertenberger (lower left)

76 by 74 in 193 by 187.9 cm

oil and white metal leaf on canvas

Sale: Christie's, New York, June 13, 2008, lot 137, illustrated

Hertenberger's talents as an artist and book illustrator combine in this evocative, large-scale composition of the Goddess Diana. In the present work, Hertenberger adapts the traditional iconography of the goddess to new dramatic effect. Diana, the virgin huntress, is here shown with an empty quiver (the arrows spent), her arm resting gently on a stag with tall, ridged, spear-like horns, glowing green eyes and a golden amulet around his neck; his doe, meanwhile, slips from the birch grove behind. Having assisted her mother deliver her infant brother Apollo, Diana is generally associated with birth, which Hertenberger conveys innovatively: the budding ring of crocuses in the foreground, the basket of newly hatched chicks presented to her by a pair of faun and the new moon crescent ornament in her hair. In its impressive scale, highly stylized landscape, attenuated figures, and abstract, decorative shapes, Hertenberger's work suggests the influence of Symbolist painters like Franz von Stuck and Gustav Klimt, art nouveau and art deco interior decoration. Just as indelible here, however, is his own, distinct illustrative technique, as demonstrated in his 1949 set of fantastic illustrations for an edition of Aeschylus' Eumenides.