Object Description
400 BACCHANAL SCENE, ca. 1600
A nude, plump Bacchus sits above a group of five putti, who are making a goat jump through a hoop. He holds a bunch of grapes in his left hand and on his right arm a bowl, into which a satyr is pouring wine. Around this group are six satyrs in the background, one of whom is playing on a double flute (aulos) . At the right, an almost nude woman holds a ring with both hands.
Bronze, black coating, dia. 131 mm. This cast is modeled after a damaged or modified cast, or replica (compare the arm of Bacchus or the arm of the putto front right, or the other limbs). Casting faults at lower right.
There is a pendant to this relief which Pechstein (no. 266) calls the Wedding of Bacchus and Ariadne. There is no agreement concerning the attribution of the reliefs. Middeldorf and Goetz, and afterwards R. P. Ciardi, speak of an Italian master of the beginning of the seventeenth century. On the other hand, it is reported in the Catalogue of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam that the work is based on a drawing in the Albertina in Vienna, presumably by an unknown South Netherlandish master in the sixteenth century. Therefore the plaquette is attributed to a South Netherlandish master of the first quarter of the seventeenth century. In the auction catalog of the Gaettens Collection the plaquette is maintained to be a South German work made in the second half of the sixteenth century. Pechstein has attributed both reliefs to a "Netherlandish Romanist" of the end of the sixteenth century. An attribution to a South Netherlandish artist of ca. 1600 is the most credible.
Other specimens: (lead) Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Medailles (later cast); (bronze) Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum; Gazzada, Cagnola Collection (two casts); New York, Coll. Michael Hall, Esq.; Opava (Czechoslovakia) Museum; Santa Barbara, University Art Gallery, Morgenroth Collection.
Bibl.: Morgenroth, no. 343; Amsterdam, Catalogus van Goud en Zilverwerken, Rijksmuseum, 1952, no. 464; R. P. Ciardi, La Raccolta Cagnola dipinti e sculture, 1965, no. 219; Pechstein, no. 267; Weber, no. 714, 2. Auction catalogs: Museo de la famille de Guide di Faenza, Sangiorgi, Rome, 21-27 April 1902, no. 364 (the Morgenroth specimen); Gaettens Collection, Gaettens, Heidelberg, 1 April 1966, no. 144 (the Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum specimen).
