DionysusAriadne1.0008_Titian

DionysusAriadne1.0008_Titian

Titian (Vecellio Tiziano), "Bacchus and Ariadne," 1520 - 1523, National Gallery, London, inv. 35

Bacchus emerges with his fellow revelers from the forested landscape to the right. Falling in love with Ariadne on first sight, he leaps from his chariot, drawn by two cheetahs, towards her. Ariadne has just now realized the circumstances of her abandonment by Theseus, whose ship recedes under white sail in the distance. A conventional detail in most Ariadne paintings, the ship's silent distance contrasts with the raucousness catching Ariadne's present moment. The picture captures Ariadne's initial startlement. The maenads and other followers demonstrate the abandoned emotions of their retinue. In his dramatic entrance, Bacchus brings release. He also delivers the girl immortal catasterism, as the Corona Borealis appears in the heavens above her.

The extraordinary costliness of this painting — the brilliant blues and crimsons are made with ground semi-precious stone — was commissioned for the Camerino d'Alabastro in the Ducal Palace by Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. Titian, Bellini, and other contemporaries decorated the banqueting room with series called "The Ferrara Bacchanals." This painting was in fact a substitute for one with a similar subject which the Duke had commissioned from Raphael. Titian scored an important early audience with this show-horse piece. (Info from National Gallery website.)

Titian's narrative gain here is that he outshines his rivals in the same room, aiming to impress the Duke with his painterly ability to render classical tales in gorgeous detail. Titian throughout his career uses his canvas as a tool for depicting Ovid's versions of classical myths in particular; here Ovid's forebear Catullus has the narrative model (cf. Catullus 64), though the account in Metamorphoses 3 quickly summarizes the myth. Titian may have been under the influence here of the Duke also, a scholar whose interests could steer an impressionable artist through classical texts. Or is Titian leading his peers away from Ovid's canonical "painter's bible" into other classical authors?