Bacchus and Ariadne

Van der Werff's Bacchus and Ariadne from 1712 depicts the mythological encounter in which Bacchus, god of wine and ecstasy, discovers the abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos and takes her as his divine consort. The subject had been a vehicle for expressing extremes of emotion — Ariadne's grief at Theseus's abandonment transformed into joy at divine love — since Titian's great canvas of the 1520s. For van der Werff, the subject allowed him to combine the idealized female nude with a mythological narrative, elevating his fijnschilder technique into the prestige domain of history painting.

The encounter of Bacchus's festive thyrsus-bearing attendants with the mourning Ariadne creates a dramatic emotional contrast that van der Werff renders in his characteristically smooth, glowing manner. The flesh painting achieves a warm, almost alabaster quality, with the meticulous rendering of drapery and landscape setting displaying his full technical range.