The Four Festivals: Festival of Bacchus (c. 1693–1715): Art, History and Details

The Four Festivals: Festival of Bacchus (c. 1693–1715) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Claude Gillot (French, 1673–1722).

The work and its context

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

The principal source of inspiration for Claude Gillot, while working in Paris during the final years of the reign of Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715), was popular theater. His staged and precisely choreographed bacchanalia scene consists of music, dancing bacchants, drinking, and plentiful food, all symmetrically composed around a herm (a stone pillar topped by the head of Bacchus). According to written sources in Gillot’s time, a herm marked a site in ancient Greece where rites to Bacchus occurred. At the far right, a young satyr holds a thyrsus—a wand decorated with grape leaves and ivy—a bacchanalian symbol of fertility and hedonism.

Object facts

• Title: The Four Festivals: Festival of Bacchus
• Date: c. 1693–1715
• Creator attribution: Claude Gillot (French, 1673–1722)
• Culture: France
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching and engraving
• Dimensions: Sheet: 19.6 x 36.5 cm (7 11/16 x 14 3/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1985.97.2

A detail from the museum

The lovely bacchantes (female followers of Bacchus) dancing throughout the composition appear in contrast with the beastly satyrs and fauns. The term bacchante could also be used to describe an intoxicated and libidinous woman in less mythological contexts.

Collection credit

In memory of Jane Millar Harris and John H. Harris

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.