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Painting of man, satyrs, and baby beneath trees

A light-skinned man reclines in the left foreground. He wears a crown of leaves and has a blue cloth across his lap. He has glazed eyes and a toothy smile, and he holds a wrinkly, shell-like object in his hand. He is surrounded three grinning light-skinned figures, all with pointed ears and horns on their heads. We can see that the figure at right has furry gray goat’s legs. In the left foreground, a light-skinned baby with a flower crown sits on a wooden platform surrounded by grapes. He urinates on the ground below.

Gallery Text

In this mythological scene, Francesco Fracanzano depicts a drunken Silenus, the chief of the satyrs and tutor to the wine god Dionysus. Instead of painting him as an elderly man, as was customary, Fracanzano here portrays him in his youth. In doing so, he stresses Silenus’s incapacitated state, his stretched skin, rosy cheeks, and oversized legs evoking the body of the infant Dionysus, who is seated at his feet on the left. Fracanzano trained in the Neapolitan studio of Jusepe de Ribera, where he adopted his master’s dramatic use of color and chiaroscuro — the strong contrast between light and dark tones — for emotional effect. His over-scaled figures and use of color echo the work of other artists of the period, including Simon Vouet, Artemesia Gentileschi, and Francesco Guarino.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1932.70
People
Francesco Fracanzano, Italian (1612 - 1656)
Title
The Drunken Silenus
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1640s
Places
Creation Place: Europe, Italy, Apulia
Culture
Italian
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/229136

Location

Location
Level 2, Room 2210, West Arcade
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Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
sight: 225.4 x 178.8 cm (88 3/4 x 70 3/8 in.)
framed: 267 x 219.6 x 11.8 cm (105 1/8 x 86 7/16 x 4 5/8 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Albert Keep Isham (1894-1931) bequest; to Ralph Isham (1865-1937), Santa Barbara, California, gift; to Fogg Art Museum, 1932.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Ralph Isham
Accession Year
1932
Object Number
1932.70
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1972), p. 72
  • Edgar Peters Bowron, European Paintings Before 1900 in the Fogg Art Museum: A Summary Catalogue including Paintings in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 52, color plate; pp. 107, 345, repr. b/w cat. no. 727

Exhibition History

  • 32Q: 2210 West Arcade, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050

Subjects and Contexts

  • Google Art Project

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Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu