An Artists Studio - oil painting - York Museum Trust

An Artists Studio. 

York Museum Trust.

oil painting on canvas.

Canvas size: 54 x 72 cms.

c 1725 - 35.

Another in the occasional series of images depicting sculpture in other media.

Note the bust on the floor by the table, and the reduced cast of Silenus with the child Dionysus. a Roman copy of the middle 2nd century CE possibly after a Greek original by Lysippos (ca. 300 BC). 

There are at least two ancient versions of this statue (see below).

They say the painting is Dutch but the glazing bars on the window might suggest that it is English.

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Silenus with the child Dionysus.

Braccio Nuovo, Mueum Chiramonte, Rome.

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Another in the Louvre, Paris.

Found in 1569 in the former gardens of the Salluste. In Carlo Mutti Collection in Rome in 1594; in the Borghese collection in 1613; Purchased by Napoleon in 1807.

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2000 mm x 970 mm x 1000 mm.

They say "c. 1800 - original in the Louvre"

Royal Acadamy  Collection.

see -https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/cast-of-silenus-with-the-infant-bacchus

This is a plaster cast of the marble sculpture Silenus with the Infant Bacchus in the Louvre, itself believed to be a Roman copy of a bronze original by Lysippos or one of his followers. 

The statue was discovered by Carlo Muti before 1569 on his grounds near the present Cassino Massimo, and remained in Muti’s collection for many years, although it was in the Borghese collection by 1613. It was in the Villa Borghese by 1638, where it occupied a room named after it by 1650.

In the 17th century the statue was sometimes thought to represent Saturn holding a baby who he is about to devour, but by the late 18th century it was generally described as a Faun (frequently Silenus in particular) holding the infant Bacchus.

The statue was one of the most admired statues in Rome - it was frequently reproduced and sometimes classed alongside the Venus de’ Medici and the Farnese Hercules (both represented in the Royal Academy  cast collection). 

A marble copy was made for Philip IV of Spain in 1650 while a marble copy was made for Versailles in 1684. Casts and copies continued to be popular in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The statue was purchased by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807 along with many of the Borghese antiquities, and was in the Musée Napoléon by 1811. 

By 1815 the statue had again had a room named after it in its new surroundings.

Further reading

Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p.307

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