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Description: | Signed: yes Description: One of four paintings illustrating the seasons. The offering of a libation to Bacchus at the storage of the year's vintage. The bacchante wears a leopard skin and ivy wreath, traditional symbols of the cult of Bacchus. As Rosemary Barrow notes (Alma-Tadema exh. cat., 1996-97), unlike the artist's other bacchantes, this figure imitates a particular classical prototype: her Greek style drapery, falling in vertical sculpture-like ripples and grooves, and her leaping pose are based on dancing maenad relief figures. Alma-Tadema is known to have possessed a photograph of a maenad relief from the Conservatori Museum, Rome. She pours wine from a ram's head rhyton over a flaming brazier supported by a bronze tripod. An archaic looking bronze herm of Bacchus in the top right oversees the ritual. The reds and golds of this painting suit the autumnal theme. | Subjects: | mythology (Bacchic feast) | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Alma-Tadema, Lawrence (Dutch and British painter, 1836-1912) Æ | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=9175... | Go to resource |
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