Diana, dem Bade entsteigend, von Nymphen umgeben

Anselm Feuerbach's 1854 'Diana, dem Bade entsteigend, von Nymphen umgeben' (Diana Rising from the Bath, Surrounded by Nymphs) is an early work from his student and formative period, painted before his transformative years in Rome. Feuerbach studied in Munich under Wilhelm von Kaulbach, then in Antwerp and Paris before settling in Rome from 1856. This 1854 work shows him working within the neoclassical mythological tradition of his Munich training while beginning to develop the warm, Italian-inflected palette he would perfect after his time in Rome. Diana, goddess of the hunt and the moon, was a standard subject for the female nude in classical disguise — the same narrative of the goddess surprised at her bath that Actaeon witnessed and died for. Feuerbach's treatment at this early stage would be somewhat more academic and conventional than his later, more distinctive classicism, but it demonstrates his facility with the nude figure and his already-evident sense of classical decorum.

The multi-figure composition of Diana and her nymphs required careful arrangement of the female figures in plausible spatial relationships while maintaining each figure's individual treatment. The warm flesh tones against a likely wooded or watery setting draw on the Venetian tradition that.