Franceschini’s picture records the fateful moment when the young hunter Actaeon by chance comes across the goddess Diana and her nymphs bathing in the forest. According to ancient Hellenic myth a human who has seen a god must die. Diana therefore transforms Actaeon into a stag whereupon his own hounds tear him to pieces as Ovid recounts in his Metamorphoses.

Actaeon’s horrible end, hinted at by the presence of the dogs, would only be apparent to viewers familiar with Ovid. Most portrayals of the story concentrate on the dramatic climax when the young hunter is transformed. This picture, in contrast, takes as its focus the aesthetically pleasing scene of the bathers.

The immaculate beauty of the nymphs seems almost abstract. Here, it becomes clear to what extent Franceschini had already moved away from earlier Bolognese artists, above all Francesco Albani.

Even before the completion of the Garden Palace in Vienna, Prince Johann Adam Andreas I had commissioned two painting cycles from Marcantonio Franceschini in Bologna. The paintings were intended to decorate two rooms of the Piano Nobile. The paintings were meant to fully clothe the rooms from the floor to the ceiling. This required various formats including round pictures for the ceilings, colossal paintings almost five metres high to cover the walls, overdoors and narrow horizontal pieces above the windows. This grand undertaking resulting in two cycles comprising a total of 26 pictures was not completed until 1700. The Prince had left the choice of subjects to the painter, but, at the same time, had expressed a preference for the ‘fables of Ovid’. The painter settled for cyclical depictions of the Diana myth and the story of Venus and Adonis.

Venus anointing the Dead Adonis was an overdoor and completes the cycle of pictures based on Ovid’s story of the love between Venus and Adonis, who was killed by a wild boar while on the hunt. To immortalise the memory of Adonis, Venus sprinkles the corpse of her beloved with nectar and transforms his blood into a flower which blossoms each year. This scene of transfiguration is rarely depicted and Franceschini’s work is true to Ovid’s narration. Only the companions of Venus, astonished by the blood-red Adonis flowers – the anemone – are an artistic addition. They are presumably included in deference to the client’s admiration for the depiction of the naked female body. The Prince expected from Franceschini, ‘di far di belli nudi, mentre in questo si vede più l' arte’ (letter of 25 March 1693).

The grouping of various types of birds had already been a feature of Jan Brueghel the Elder’s paradise paintings and a means of representing the element of air in his Allegories. Frans Snyders was another artist to apply this visual idea.

Whereas the composition of these models was more realistic, Jan Fyt clusters the birds and adds a story to the scene. The birds have banded together and with open beaks intone a melody from a book of music propped up in a tree branch. But they are not singing birds and the result is only cawing, crowing and clattering. The scene becomes a parody on the vanity of the world of music. Not even the colourful finery of the rooster, the parrot or the peacock can mask the lack of talent.

Apart from the comic aspect, the picture lives from the fine nuances in the presentation of the colourful plumage of the birds.

The almost life-size portrayal of a piebald stallion was originally part of a series of six horse pictures Hamilton completed in 1700 for the newly-built Liechtenstein Garden Palace in Rossau. Seven years later the landscape painter Anton Faistenberger was commissioned to add backgrounds to four of these pictures. Against Faistenberger’s landscape, the stallion is seen rearing impressively with blue decorative ribbons on the carefully plaited mane.

As if painting a portrait, Hamilton strove not only to depict the beauty of the animals but also to capture their characteristic nature. The animals in the pictures were stallions from the Liechtenstein stud in Eisgrub, founded by Prince Karl Eusebius (1611–1684). At times his stables housed 120 stallions of various breeds, which were admired across Europe.

Between 1688 and 1698 Prince Johann Adam Andreas I had Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach erect a spacious, four-wing stable complex at the Eisgrub stud. The resulting building was the equal of the palace and, along with this picture, expressed the important role of the horse in the world of the aristocracy and the court at that time. The tradition for the series of pictures commissioned by Prince Johann Adam Andreas I of Liechtenstein reaches back to Giulio Romano’s horse gallery in Mantua’s Palazzo del Tè.

Hunting game is spread out artistically on a stone slab in a park landscape that extends into a hunting ground. This type of picture was developed by Jan Weenix and Dirk Valkenburg owes a clear debt to his teacher. The decisive innovation lies in the introduction of a dramatic plot. A fox attempts to steal the lifeless fowl, while, on the other side, a hunting dog jumps in to drive off the thief.

Lying in the midst of the hunting trophies with elegantly spread wings, the swan attracts the viewer’s entire attention. Rubens seems to have first discovered the swan’s elegant pose as the subject of a still-life around 1610. Valkenburg’s portrayal is drawn from this model.

The picture is part of a series originally consisting of four paintings commissioned by Prince Johann Adam Andreas I of Liechtenstein in 1698–99.

Valkenburg painted this picture along with three other gamepieces in 1698 and 1699, on commission from Prince Johann Adam Andreas I of Liechtenstein. The fee was a princely thousand guilders. The baroque gamepiece was a pictorial realisation of the aristocratic hunting prerogative.

The points of contact between this painting and its princely patron can be clearly seen. In his still-life, Valkenburg included weapons from the splendid Liechtenstein armoury, presumably at the behest of the Prince. The painting reveals a precise reproduction of a wheellock rifle made by Johann Michael Maucher. A gift from Emperor Leopold I, boasting richly carved ivory decoration, this weapon remains one of the most unusual treasures in the Princely Collections. This still-life has become more than a lively animal piece. It is also a homage to a baroque prince, for whom hunting was a passion as well as a ruler’s virtue.