| Artist | Unknown |
|---|---|
| Type | Cast stone |
| Dimensions | 200 cm × 91 cm × 76 cm (78 in × 36 in × 30 in) |
| Location | Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana |
| Owner | Indianapolis Museum of Art |
Diana with Dog is a life-size, figurative cast stone outdoor sculpture located on the historic Oldfields estate on the campus of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), in Indianapolis, Indiana. The sculpture depicts Diana, the ancient Roman goddess of the hunt (equivalent to Artemis in the Greek pantheon), standing next to a seated hound and bearing a bow and quiver of arrows.[1][2]
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Diana stands in contrapposto, with her weight shifted toward her proper right leg. Her proper left foot rests on a rock. In her proper left arm Diana holds a hunting bow at her side, which extends from her mid-thigh to above her shoulder. Her proper right arm reaches across her body to help stabilize the bow. Her head is turned to look out over her proper right side.
The folds of her dress are parted to expose her proper left foot, bent knee, and leg up to mid-thigh. Here, a diamond-shaped clasp holds the parted material, which cascades to ground length around the rest of the figure. Her dress is belted around her waist and the upper portion covers her proper left breast and shoulder. She also wears a small cloth that billows behind her from her proper right hip and drapes over her proper left shoulder, where it is then twisted into a rope that crosses the front of her body to connect with the end at her hip. A quiver full of arrows is slung across her back by a strap on her proper right shoulder. On her head she wears a small crescent moon-shaped diadem; her hair is tied into a bun at the back.
The dog sits against Diana’s proper right leg. Its neck cranes upward to look at her face, and the tip of its nose reaches to her mid-thigh.
The sculpture rests upon a low, square concrete base.[2][3]
The grounds of Oldfields were landscaped by Percival Gallagher of the Olmsted Brothers in the 1920s. The property and all sculptures on it were donated to the IMA by the family of former Oldfields owner Josiah K. Lilly, Jr., in 1967. In 2001 the outdoor sculptures were assessed, and eighteen selected pieces were accessioned into the IMA’s Lilly House collection. Diana with Dog was assigned Accession Number LH2001.226. Its associated base (see Location History below) is accessioned as NON_ART_83.
It is likely that Diana with Dog is one copy of a mass-produced form, as is the case with many of the Oldfields sculptures, including Diana with Deer and Diana Robing. Moreover, it too may be a copy of a Greco-Roman or neoclassical sculpture, as these were common inspirations for mass-produced estate decoration. Diana was frequently depicted mid-hunt with a bow and quiver, and there are several examples of ancient Diana sculptures including a hound. The theme remained a favorite in Renaissance and neoclassical art.[4]
It is not known with certainty when this sculpture was first brought to the Oldfields estate, but it was probably the purchase of the Lilly family after 1932.[5] It is known that bids for two marble Diana sculptures were under consideration in 1923 during the landscaping work done by Gallagher.[6]
The sculpture was placed at the edge of the woods opposite the Oldfields Recreation Building either when it first arrived at Oldfields or when the adjacent areas were developed, and it remained there until at least 1996.[5] While in this location it rested on a Rococo base, which can be seen in several photographs (one undated and black-and-white, two Polaroids from the late 1980s, and a photograph taken in 1996 for the publication of Heritage Landscape’s report). Sometime after this point the sculpture was moved (possibly for the renovation of the Garden for Everyone or the installation of a temporary parking lot during the museum expansion of 2000-2005) and the base was relocated to the Grounds Barn.[3]
The cast stone sculpture is monitored, cleaned, and treated regularly by the IMA art conservation staff.[7] This sculpture was surveyed in July 1993 of as part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture database, and it was considered to be well maintained.[1]
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