Cleveland Museum of Art

Bacchanales: The Satyr's Dance

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Date

1763

Medium

etching

Culture

France, 18th century

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Jean-Honoré Fragonard made these four etchings shortly after returning to Paris from Italy, where he studied antique subjects and sculpture. He may have also looked at other sources for inspiration, such as Jacques François Joseph Saly’s suite of vase designs. Though the prints feature the followers of Bacchus, the wine god does not make an appearance. Instead, Fragonard highlighted the playfully erotic frolics, conflicts, and even family life of a group of bacchants, conceiving them as low-relief sculptures on stone fragments within abundant foliage. Fragonard’s creations helped to popularize revelries in nature in French art, architecture, and garden design during the later 1700s. On the left side of the composition, standing inside a large vessel like an umbrella in a vestibule, is a pinecone-topped staff called a thyrsus. Thyrsi were carried by Bacchus and his followers.

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