Cleveland Museum of Art

Bacchanalian Scene

Date

1–100 CE

Medium

schist

Culture

Pakistan, Gandhara, Buner area, early Kushan period

Department

Indian and Southeast Asian Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The pleated garments and crowns of laurels suggest that these six figures were intended to appear like Greco-Roman people from the Mediterranean world. The male figure at the far right carries a skin, presumably full of wine, next to another bearded man holding a large footed vessel. A woman with a palm leaf on her arm—a sign of victory—gestures suggestively toward a man playing a drum. At the far left a figure drinks wine from a cup that the man at the far left may have just filled from his pitcher. Silver striated vessels that were used as reliquaries are similar to the cup from which the second figure from the left drinks.

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