Jump to content

Dionysus, called Narcissus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dionysus, called Narcissus
ArtistPraxiteles (?)
Year1st century BC. - 1st century AD.
MediumBronze sculpture
Dimensions63 cm (25 in)

Dionysus, called Narcissus (Italian: Dioniso, così detto Narciso) is a bronze ancient Roman statuette, created between the 1st century BC. and 1st century AD e.. It was found during excavations in Pompeii in 1862. The statuette is believed to be a Roman copy of a ancient Greek original from the 4th century BC.[1]

It was created by an artist of the school of Praxiteles. It depicts a naked, slender, thoughtful ephebe standing in a contrapposto pose with an ivy wreath on his head. A goatskin is thrown over his left shoulder, and sandals are on his feet. Initially identified as a statue of the mythical handsome Narcissus, the statuette later became attributed as an image of the god Dionysus. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, it gained great popularity and was copied many times. Among other things, the statuette attracted the attention of representatives of the homosexual subculture (Oscar Wilde, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky), and also became a source of inspiration for two ekphrasis (Vyacheslav Ivanov (1904) and Tennessee Williams (1948)).[1]

The statuette is preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.[1]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c Kuivalainen, Ilkka (2021). The Portrayal of Pompeian Bacchus. Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 140. Vaasa: The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. pp. 219–220. ISBN 978-951-653-463-6.

Bibliography

[edit]
[edit]

Media related to Dionysus, called Narcissus, from Pompeii at Wikimedia Commons