Diogenes Throwing away his Drinking Cup
Salvator Rosa (Italian, 1615–1673)
1651
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- height 344 cm, width 212.5 cm, height 365.8 cm, width 234.3 cm
- Culture
- Italian
- Museum
- SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark: SMK waives its rights in this photograph, 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 SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
About this work
The Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (c. 400–325 BCE) occupies the centre of the composition. He holds his drinking bowl in his hand as he turns to an assembly of men, showing them a boy bending down at a stream to drink out of his hands. Being a so-called cynic (”kynikos”: Greek for “doglike”), Diogenes lived “like a dog”, i.e. with no material goods. The drinking cup was one of his few remaining possessions, and now, inspired by the boy’s example, he sees how that too is superfluous and casts it aside. Salvator Rosa considered himself a painter-philosopher and was greatly interested in the neo-stoic ideas about ethics and moral philosophy current at the time, focusing on virtues such as endurance, constancy and restraint.
