Bacchanal with a Wine Vat (1470–80): Art, History and Details

Bacchanal with a Wine Vat (1470–80) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Andrea Mantegna (Italian, about 1431–1506).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Andrea Mantegna was among the first artists in Italy to produce engravings. His scene of a bacchanalia, a wine-fueled festival of ancient Rome, is composed as if on a shallow stage, attesting to Mantegna’s interest in relief-carved Roman sarcophagi (stone coffins). Standing with his horn of plenty, Bacchus is in control of his senses. The mortals around him falter from too much drink. When Mantegna began making engravings in the 1470s, he was among the first to use the technique to reproduce drawings. Many of Mantegna’s engravings show printing imperfections, the result of a shallowly carved printing plate and ink that did not adhere evenly to the paper.

Object facts

• Title: Bacchanal with a Wine Vat
• Date: 1470–80
• Creator attribution: Andrea Mantegna (Italian, about 1431–1506)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Dimensions: Sheet: 30 x 43.8 cm (11 13/16 x 17 1/4 in.)
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1926.260

A detail from the museum

Philosophers and moralists cautioned against drinking straight from the vat, because, as Bacchus's exalted pose suggests, only a god could handle such an intoxicating drink. Mere mortals usually mixed their wine with water until the 1800s.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Prasse, Leona. "The Engraving of Andrea Mantegna." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 43, no. 4 (April 1956): 59-62.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.