This blog was inspired not just by my love of Greek art–but also–I have to come clean here–my obsession with the Southern Vampire Mysteries (aka. the Sookie Stackhouse books) by Charlaine Harris and the HBO TV-show True Blood. In recent episodes (taken from the book the Living Dead in Dallas), there has been a maenad (“maened” for the spelling-challenged) character who throws crazy “nature” orgies with the local townsfolk.
Maenads were the drunken female followers of Dionysus, the god of wine and divine madness. The term “bacchanal,” or “bacchanalia,” essentially means “divine orgy” and comes from the name Bacchus, the Roman version of Dionysus. So technically the Greek versions of these orgies weren’t called bacchanals, but are instead are referred to as the “Dionysian Mysteries”.
The Dionysian Mysteries were holy rituals which used various intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques, such as dancing, music, and sex to remove inhibitions and break down artificial social constraints, thus liberating the followers of Dionysus, allowing them to return to a more primitive, natural, and blissful state of consciousness.
So let’s visit some bacchanals of yesteryear, shall we? Notice how often Pan, the Goat-God (represented by The Devil card in the tarot), shows up. He loved to hang out with Dionysus and Bacchus (when know by his Roman name “Faunus”). He was quite the life of the party!
RICCI, Sebastiano
c. 1716
Oil on canvas, 84 x 100 cm
Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice
Bacchanal of Putti by NICOLAS POUSSIN
Date :1626
Technique :Oil on canvas, 74 x 84 cm
Location :Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome
Bacchanal Before a Statue of Pan by NICOLAS POUSSIN (1594-1665)
Pan copulating with a Goat, from Herculaneum, 1st century B.C.
(from an Ancient Greek krater)
An illustration by Édouard-Henri Avril (21 May 1843 – 1928)
Bacchanal by Auguste Léveque Bacchanalien, 1864- 1921
Marc Chagall’s (1887-1985) Bacchanal
Erotic Windchime from Pompei (the city mostly destroyed of the volcano Mount Vesuvius in AD 79). These were common household items! Just had to throw this in as it illustrates how Greeks and Romans had no concept of “obscenity” with reference to erotic art or images of sexual anatomy.
Red-figure cup by the Pedeius Painter.
Late 6th century B.C., Greece.
Detail of a Vase from Stamnos, First century B.C., Greece
Aphrodite, Eros, and Pan from Delos, c. 100 BC
Athens National Archaeological Museum
La-Reine-Bacchanal by Fritz Zuber-Buhler (Swiss, 1822-1896) Originally the Dionysian Mysteries were only for women.
And finally, (perhaps my favorite) a bacchanal by Picasso (1881-1973)
The interesting thing is that orgies were commonly depicted in ancient Greek and Roman art. There are none in medieval art, when Pan become associated with Satan the Devil, but then in the Renaissance, Pan and bacchanals make a big comeback–which continues right up until modern times.
xoxo,
Izabael
