Italian school; XVIII century.

Italian school; XVIII century.
"Bacchus."
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Presents restorations.
Measurements: 94 x 70 cm.
In a barely perceptible landscape background rises the bust of a young man who holds and squeezes a bunch of grapes, enraptured with the extraction of its juice. The man, wearing a red cloak, is adorned with a leopard skin around his waist and a crown of vine leaves and vine shoots on his head, an element that would identify him with the Roman god of wine, Bacchus.
Dionysus was an important god in Greek mythology. Known as Bacchus in Roman mythology, he was the god associated with the grape harvest and wine, patron of the theater, and widely represented in solo art, in mythological themes or in the so-called "Bacchanals", where he sometimes did not even appear. These gatherings around wine and a certain debauchery often served as an excuse for painters to show female nudes and more lively attitudes, and in them they used to show fauns, satyrs, Pan, etc.
The naturalism of the present work would link it to the Italian school, and recalls models of the same theme as the one Caraggio painted in 1596, or the one Rubens painted between 1638 and 1640, with the god in full body and accompanied, or that of Joachim Wtewael, or those of Guido Reni, or Cornelis van Haarlem, to cite a few examples.