Artwork Page for Bacchanales: The Satyr's Dance

Details / Information for Bacchanales: The Satyr's Dance

Bacchanales: The Satyr's Dance

1763
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Jean-Honoré Fragonard

(French, 1732–1806)
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Culture
France, 18th century
Medium
etching
Measurements
Image: 13.6 x 20.3 cm (5 3/8 x 8 in.); Sheet: 14.8 x 21.3 cm (5 13/16 x 8 3/8 in.)
Credit Line
Severance and Greta Millikin Trust 2012.64.4
Catalogue raisonné
Wildenstein 6
State
I/II
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
Print
?

Did You Know?

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.

Description

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.
A horizontally oriented print in black ink depicts five light-skinned figures against a stone panel framed by dense foliage. On our left, a muscular horned satyr with goat legs cradles two pudgy infants. In the center, a woman in a flowing dress dances toward our right, looking back while holding an instrument aloft. Beside her, a young satyr child leaps with arms raised. A large decorated vessel rests on the lower left.

Bacchanales: The Satyr's Dance

1763

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

(French, 1732–1806)
France, 18th century

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