Dancing Satyr (500–475 BCE): Art, History and Details

Dancing Satyr (500–475 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Part man and part beast, satyrs were mythical woodland creatures. In art, they were depicted with the ears and tail of a goat or horse, sometimes with hooves, and in a high state of sexual arousal. Satyrs often accompanied Dionysus, the god of wine, in his drinking bouts and other escapades. These three probably once decorated the rim of a large punch-bowl-shaped vessel for serving wine.

Object facts

• Title: Dancing Satyr
• Date: 500–475 BCE
• Culture: Greece, Boeotia
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: painted terracotta
• Dimensions: Overall: 8.4 x 11 x 5.6 cm (3 5/16 x 4 5/16 x 2 3/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1992.352.1

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.
• Mikolic, Amanda. A Field Guide to Medieval Monsters. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019.

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.