Cleveland Museum of Art

Bacchanalian Relief

Date

200s CE

Medium

schist

Culture

Pakistan, Gandhara, Kushan period

Department

Indian and Southeast Asian Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Grape vines create vignettes with scenes of drunken revelry on this architectural carving that once fit by joinery to other carved stone blocks at the base of a Buddhist monument. Bacchus himself, the Greco-Roman god of wine, may be the third figure from the left; bearded, portly, and inebriated, his garment slips as he collapses. Cupid and Aphrodite appear in the vignette on the right next to an amorous couple. On the side is a female nature divinity, grasping the branch of a tree, but unlike her counterparts from farther south in India, she is clothed in a long tunic, pants, and scarf associated with the dress of the Central Asian nomadic groups.

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.