Follower of Dosso Dossi, 'A Bacchanal', about 1525

An inventory made in Ferrara in 1631 describes this painting as a bacchanal: a general scene of lovemaking and drunkenness involving nymphs and satyrs – followers of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, agriculture and fertility. It has been suggested that the picture shows Silenus arriving uninvited at the Feast of the Gods, as described by the Roman writer Ovid (Fasti, VI, 324). However, the fat drunkard Silenus appears to be riding away from the party on his donkey.

A group of men and women are seated on the grass around a white cloth on which a plate of food, a loaf of bread and a wooden spoon and a glass have been laid. Other bowls of food and plates lie on the grass. One bowl contains bread, cheese and fruit; the other contains grapes and a cut melon on which three flies have settled. A woman brings a dish with a roast fowl, and another carries what looks like a wineskin.

Two men in the foreground are naked, while the women are elegantly dressed. In the Concert Champêtre (Louvre, Paris) generally thought to be by Titian, we see a similar party in the countryside, although there the men are clothed and the women are naked. In this painting the man on the right, holding a glass of red wine in his left hand, looks directly at the viewer and smiles, his mouth open. His face is highly reminiscent of Dosso Dossi’s laughing man in Laughter, Crying, Fear and Wrath (Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice). Beside him, a putto blows a horn to wake up his drunken companion who has allowed the rush-covered flask of wine to spill.

To the left, a satyr stands beside a naked nymph draped in a red cloth, her body resembling an antique marble figure. Behind them, a woman embraces a satyr on the grass, and in the distant glade women listen to satyrs playing a recorder and fiddle. Two of the women watch Silenus as he rides away. Cows graze in the meadows and a shepherd sits under a tree with his flock of sheep.

The painting resembles the great bacchanal scenes that were commissioned from the leading painters of Venice by Alfonso I d‘Este, Duke of Ferrara for the Camerino d’Alabastro (Alabaster Room) in his palace, in particular Bellini’s Feast of the Gods (National Gallery of Art, Washington) and Titian’s Bacchanal of the Andrians (Prado, Madrid). These pictures are noted for their rustic comedy as well as their visions of the pastoral excursions of the gods. Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne was also painted for this room. The absence of the pigment ultramarine blue, which features consistently in the paintings for the Camerino d‘Alabastro, makes it highly unlikely that this bacchanal could never have hung among them, as has sometimes been suggested. The blue pigment in the sky here is azurite, which is now hidden by several layers of old discoloured varnish and overpainting.

It is not known who painted this picture, but the artist must have known Dosso’s work in the Ducal Palace in Ferrara. It may have been commissioned by a Ferrarese patron who wanted an original work inspired by Bellini and Titian’s Bacchanals for Alfonso d’Este.