Bacchantes and Satyrs

Bacchanalian subjects — depicting the frenzied revelry of Bacchus's followers, including satyrs and maenads, sometimes identified as bacchantes — had deep roots in European painting reaching back to Titian. Charles Joseph Natoire painted this version in 1744, now in the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, during his mature period when such mythological subjects were a staple of his production. The bacchanal offered painters the opportunity to combine the nude or semi-nude female figure with vigorous, dynamic male figures in a context of sanctioned excess, and the Rococo era brought a particular lightness and sensory pleasure to the subject. Glasgow's substantial collection of French and Dutch Baroque and Rococo works includes several examples of this type of mythological scene. Natoire's training in Rome and his long experience with decorative mythological cycles gave him the technical resources for such multi-figure compositions with their demands for varied gesture, expression, and convincing flesh.

The bacchanal format requires Natoire to manage a complex arrangement of interacting figures, combining the erotic energy of the bacchantes with the more robust vigour of the satyrs. He uses warm, flushed flesh tones throughout, with the sensory exuberance of the subject reflected in a looser, more animated brushwork than his more formal mythological compositions. Vine leaves and grapes punctuate the surface.