Bacchus (Leonardo)

Infobox Painting|

title=Bacchus
artist=Workshop of Leonardo da Vinci
year=1510-1515
type=Oil on walnut panel transferred to canvas
height=177
width=115
city=Paris
museum=Louvre

The Leonardesque painting of "Bacchus", formerly a "Saint John the Baptist", in the Musée du Louvre is based on a drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci but executed by an unknown follower, perhaps in Leonardo's workshop. The drawing Sidney J. Freedberg assigns to Leonardo's second Milan period. [S.J. Freedberg, "A Recovered Work of Andrea del Sarto with Some Notes on a Leonardesque Connection" "The Burlington Magazine" 124 No. 950 (May 1982:266, 281-288) p 285; the badly smudged and damaged red chalk drawing, conserved in the Museo del Santuario del Sacro Monte, Varese, is illustrated p.284, fig. 27.] Some have claimed that the painting could have been done by any of several Lombard painters, Cesare da Sesto, [Cesare is mopst often credited with the best of three copies of this work in its original formulation, on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland.] Marco d'Oggiono, Francesco Melzi, "none of them successfully" Freedberg remarked [Freedberg 1982:285] or by Cesare Bernazzano. The painting began its career as a "Saint John the Baptist" who is pointing with his right hand off to the right, and with his left hand grasps his thyrsus. Then in the late seventeenth century [After 1683, when it was inventoried at "Saint Jean dans le désert" at Fontainebleau, but before 1693, when it was inventoried at Meudon as a "Bacchus", with a marginal note that it had formerly been previously inventoried as a "Saint John". (Freedberg 1982:285, note 16.] it was overpainted and altered, to serve as a "Bacchus".

Cassiano dal Pozzo remarked of the painting in its former state, which he saw at Fontainebleau in 1625, that it had neither devotion, decorum nor similitude, [Noted by A. Ottino della Chiesa, "Leonardo Pittore" (Milan) 1967:109, from a document in the Vatican Library.] the suavely beautiful, youthful and slightly androgynous "Giovannino" was so at variance with artistic conventions in portraying the Baptist— neither the older ascetic prophet nor the Florentine baby "Giovannino", but a type of Leonardo's invention, of a disconcerting, somewhat ambiguous sensuality, familiar in Leonardo's half-length "Saint John the Baptist", also in the Louvre. [See Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, "Giovannino Battista: A Study in Renaissance Religious Symbolism" "The Art Bulletin" 37.2. (June 1955:85-101).]

The overpainting transformed the image of St. John into one of a lusty pagan, by converting the long-handled cross-like staff to a Bacchic thyrsus and adding an ivy wreath. The fur and wreath in the painting are the legacy of John the Baptist, while the fruit and laurel wreath relate the figure to Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and intoxication.

Notes

References

*Musée du Louvre, "Hommage à Léonard de Vinci" 1952:34ff.