The Triumph of Silenus
Gerard van Obstal (Flemish, c. 1597–1668)
c. 1660
- Medium
- Marble
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- 36.2 × 63.5 × 6.1 cm (14 1/4 × 25 × 2 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Purchased with funds provided by Mrs. Eloise W. Martin and Mrs. Edward J. Uihlein through the Antiquarian Society, Mrs. DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Kay and Frederick Krehbiel; Major Acquisitions Centennial, Jane B. Tripp and Mr. and Mrs.…
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Born and trained in Antwerp at the height of Peter Paul Rubens’s influence, Gerard van Opstal settled in Paris, where he contributed to the decoration of important private residences and royal projects like the Louvre. Adapting Rubens’s heroic figures and penchant for mythological themes to a smaller scale for private collectors, he excelled at carving delicate, playful reliefs showing the followers of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, in marble and in ivory. Here, Silenus, the portly and permanently drunk companion of Bacchus, is the center of a noisy procession in which lively children imitate the behavior of their elders.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
