Modern iconography
XVIth century
Bartolomeo di Giovanni : The Wedding of Thetis
and Peleus
The right side of the panel is filled by a bacchanal of maenads and satyrs,
bordered by grey-bearded Silenus beside the belly of the Buddha, whose
abandoned body is delivered to the pranks of dwarf satyrs. One of them
nourishes, with the juice from a bunch of grapes, a horned and swollen-bellied
Dionysos, gaunt cheeks and faraway gaze. The nebride (skin of a fawn),
which he has knotted incongruously in the form of a belt, is the only
clear sign by which he can be identified. 
Mantegna, Lorenzo Costa : The Reign of Comus (1507)
This painting, commissioned by Isabelle d'Este of Mantegna, must have
been the fourth allegory decorating her studiolo. It was painted by Lorenzo
Costa, after the death of Mantegna, respecting the composition which Costa
had planned for. The painting depicts Comus, the joyful god of festivities
from Philostratus' Imagine : permissible pleasures are illustrated
on the left-hand side of the painting, separated from the forbidden pleasures
at the bottom right of the painting, by means of a diagonally positioned
triumphal arch. The foreground possibly illustrates an episode from Dionysos'
love life narrated in Nonnos' Dionysiaca (books 15 and 16) : the
love of Dionysos and Nikaia, the Phrygian naiad. Dionysos is conveyed
as a tender lover, similar to the one who won Ariadne's heart in Naxos.
Nikaia is depicted sleeping, common in illustrations of Dionysos and Ariadne.
Leonardo da Vinci (workshop) : Bacchus
The Bacchus of Leonardo da Vinci's workshop is a muscular young man,
self-possessed, with vine leaves at his feet, holding the traditional
thyrsos with his left arm. His gaze is directed towards the observer -
an image of seduction. His finger points more towards the mountain than
the sky, setting of the frenetic oreibasia. Could it be that Bacchus,
with his staff and his hill of mania, is contrasted to Moses, whose staff
is used to guide the chosen ones, and whose mountain is the seat of Law ?
Polidoro Caldara (da Caravaggio) : Psyche received
into Olympus (1524)
In the centre of the painting, Psyche is led by Hermes with Jupiter
and Juno. To the right of the painting, Bacchus is depicted as a youth
crowned with ivy, standing and pouring wine from an oenochoe into a cup,
withdrawn in relation to the other Olympians.
Rosso Fiorentino : The Contest of the Pierides
This painting depicts both the confrontation of the gods who have been
contrasted by Nietzsche: Apollo and Dionysos, the confrontation between
two art-forms.
Rosso Fiorentino draws his inspiration from a passage of Ovid's Metamorphosis
Book V : The nine Pierides, daughters of Pirus, challenged the nine
Muses on Helicon to a singing competition which they lost. In the centre
of the painting, Apollo, with Athena positioned to his left, commands
the transformation of the Pierides into birds. To Apollo's right, there
is a rear-view of the defeated Dionysos.
XVIIth century
Hendrik van Balen (about 1575-1632) : Feast of the
gods
In this Feast of the gods, Bacchus is not present at the table
of the Olympians : he is seated on a sort of sculpted stone, crowned
with ivy and dressed in a royal blue drape, letting a satyr pour him wine
into a cup, which is offered to him by a putto with skin which is greyish
against the warm colour of dionysian flesh.
Pierre Paul Rubens : The council of the gods for
the alliance of France and Spain (1621-1625)
In this council, logic hardly reigns : while Mars seems busy with
Apollo and Vulcan (of course) chasing Giants from the council room, Dionysos
whispers an argument in the ear of a goddess which seems to be based on
persuasion if we examine the god, or rather seduction if we examine the
face of the goddess.
Nicolas Poussin : The childhood of Bacchus (about
1630)
Faced with this fading myth, we can appreciate the merit of Poussin's
art, who skilfully illustrates the youth of Bacchus (Dionysos) in "The
chilhood of Bacchus" (about 1630), in a narrativity told from the
painting's right to the left : The fair child crowned with ivy, sleeping
on the visionary body of a mother who is not his own, the goat-kid shielded
from the inquiring anger of Hera, then the older child introduced to wine
by the satyrs, under the protective gaze of a spinner (perhaps Fate who
extracts him from death ?) before finding the other spinner abandoned
by Theseus. This fate is told from right to left yet can also be read
emotionally in the opposite direction, as if we move from an obvious image
which identifies the god (the intemperate drinker) to an image which reinstates
his humanity (the victim of hybris propelled to Semele by Hera :
see her divine lover in danger of losing his child and life).
Nicolas Poussin : Bacchanal with woman playing a
guitar - The great Bacchanal (about 1630)
This second painting is surprising in its interpretation of Bacchic inebriation :
the abandonment to wine echoes the abandonment of the infant fed on milk ;
furthermore, a child is depicted in the foreground, at the feet of the one
thought to be Bacchus, while two drinking companions seem to watch delicately
over the god's slumber.
Here too, mythology is lowered to the level of mortals : five youths,
three children and two women celebrate the grape harvests in an innocent
scene, the inspiration behind all the "déjeuners sur l'herbe"
(Picnic on the Grass).
XVIIIth century
Johan Georg Platzer (1704-1761) : Bacchus and
Ariadne
The mythological argument appears in this painting "as the pretext
for an exercise in skill by accumulating objects and figures, depicted
with the miniaturist detail of an artist marked by the painting of the
Dutch XVIIth century genre, and moreover the artist of love scenes set
in contemporary Viennese society." (© Louvre.edu, text by Claire
Barbillon).
