Die Errettung des Bacchus, Barock

Die Errettung des Bacchus, Barock
The Salvation of Bacchus, Baroque
Three putti next to a ram's head, watched by two women, according to mythology a ram saved Bacchus, the god of wine and fertility, from dying of thirst in the Libyan Desert by leading him to a spring: In the present depiction, the god, depicted as a child and leaning on grapes, is already content with the less profane wine from a glass bottle; in the background, a large clay vessel surrounded by wine seems to indicate the source of precisely that life-saving drink; to the right of Bacchus, a putto feeds the ram with grapes; as a sign of gratitude, the ram was projected into the sky as a spring constellation, and every year at the beginning of spring on 16 and 17 March, the ram was celebrated in the hills of Libya. At the beginning of spring on 16 and 17 March, boisterous festivities in honour of the god, the Bacchanalia, were celebrated in the hills of the Aventine in Rome. Chr. The depiction of the Bacchanalia was often dressed up in a more moralistic garb as allegories of spring, and it is in this context that the two female figures, which stand for the goddesses of vegetation, can be explained, on the left the liberally depicted spring goddess Flora (goddess of blossom, youth, joyful enjoyment of life and pregnancy) adorned with flowers, and behind her probably the fertility goddess Ceres (goddess of seed and grain), low impasto, Baroque genre painting, oil on canvas, c. 1700, unsigned, craquelure, old mount and restoration, paint chips, in need of restoration, in a beautiful ca. 11 cm wide gold stucco frame (rubbed), folding dimensions approx. 77 x 99 cm.