Cleveland Museum of Art

A Faun Grasping a Bunch of Grapes

Peter Paul Rubens

Date

after 1616–18

Medium

black chalk and brush and brown wash; framing lines in pen and black ink

Culture

Flanders

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This drawing relates to a finished painting (now lost) by Peter Paul Rubens that depicted a faun (a woodland creature similar to a satyr) squeezing grapes into the mouth of a young Bacchus. That figure, shown here, could be Silenus, who educated Bacchus on the pleasures of wine, revelry, and nature. Rubens ran a large studio and employed numerous apprentices, one of whom may have made this copy after the original painting. As a form of instruction, Rubens added ink wash to the drawing to enhance the shading on the figure and shadows behind it. Swirling draperies like the one haphazardly worn by this faun do more than conceal, in many cases they reveal an artist's technical skill. To render folds and gathers in fabric, artists used chiaroscuro , meaning contrasting light and dark tones.

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