Philolog

Both the story and the composition of Bacchus and Ariadne have several elements which should be explored in some detail, in historic and visual and visual terms. The Classical myth of Bacchus and Ariadne can be traced, as T. B. L. Webster (19) and others have shown, from Homer [e.g. Iliad XVIII.590 & Odyssey XI. 321] and Hesiod [Theogony 947 and Hymns to Dionysus VII & XXVI] to Hyginus [Fabulae 43] and on to Catullus [LXIV], Ovid and eventually Nonnus [Dionysiaca] in the 5th c. (20) Amedeo Maiuri has also stated that "...the desertion of Ariadne...and this theme of the lovely, hapless victim marooned on the desert island from which Dionysus rescued her, was very popular with Campanian painters", (21) following the precedent set in Classical literature as well as in the original Greek paintings of this theme. Dionysus-Bacchus is certainly well-represented in Greek and Roman art, as seen in several figures here.

Figs. 3-4 Dionysus in Greek red-figure with leopard skin and ivy branch; Bacchus as a grape cluster from Pompeii, National Museum, Naples

First, however, we must establish the overall context in Titian's painting. The primary subjects are young Bacchus in the left center, Ariadne on the far left and the procession of Bacchus moving from right to left out of the woods on the island of Naxos, which Ovid recounts [Metamorphoses 3: 636-49] is the adopted home of Bacchus. Ariadne is half-turned toward the departed Theseus who has abandoned her on this island. The ship of Theseus may be seen on the sea at the horizon at Ariadne's left shoulder [however, if it is the ship of Theseus, where is the black sail we know from the myth?]. Ariadne is also now half-turned toward the youthful wine god leaping from his chariot, his wine-colored cape flying from his shoulders. The head of the unbearded Bacchus is also wreathed with ivy. After she played the courtesan to Theseus and betrayed her father Minos and his Cretan tyranny by helping Theseus to escape the labyrinth with his conquest of the monstrous Minotaur, Ariadne has slipped out of the saffron yellow robe, possibly the krokotos (22) of the hetaira, now placed on the ground behind her.

Having then consumed a krater of wine after removing the courtesan's yellow robe, perhaps in desolation at the perfidy of Theseus, she is now prepared to meet the wine god himself, in her unknowing readiness (enthusiasm from en + theos “in [the] god” or “god inside” or very loosely as the excitement coming from the god entering) (23) to be filled with his immediacy like one of his maenads. This sequence is demonstrated by the krater being placed on top of the krokotos, that is, Ariadne could not meet Bacchus until she had removed the shameful reminder of Theseus. The Bacchic procession [or thiasos group] includes the chariot of Bacchus, maenads or Bacchantes, dancing female attendants with cymbals, satyrs holding thyrsus and deer haunches, a satyr child [or faunus] dragging a deer head toward a pet dog, a drunken Silenus on a donkey, and an enigmatic snake-circled figure in the right center foreground often associated with Laocoon, the doomed Trojan priest of Apollo, who really has no direct part in this story of Bacchus meeting the abandoned Ariadne with his nuptial promise of the wedding gift, a crown of eight [or nine] stars overhead in the cumulus. Many of these elements will be enlarged in following sections.

As mentioned, the iconography of Bacchus or Dionysus is one of the most complex of all Greek and Roman deities, even as a relative newcomer "oriental" fertility god to Olympus.(24) There are at least ten recognizable attributes and many well-known vignettes in the corpus of Dionysian myth cycle [e.g. the "Birth of Dionysus", "Dionysus and His Maenads", Exekias' "Dionysus and the Pirates", "The Procession of Dionysus" and "Dionysus and Ariadne"] which would have been very familiar to most Greeks as well as specifically treated by such playwrights as Euripides [The Bacchae] and Aristophanes [The Frogs] since Dionysus was patron deity of dramatic tragedy and comedy. The very image of tragoedia was the death song or cry of the goat which invoked the god's presence at a dramatic festival. As mentioned [infra n.5 of this paper], Philostratus [Imagines I.15] records this iconography as already developed in antiquity. Boardman and others (25) have shown through the range of black figure, red figure and white-ground vase painting that the manifold attributes of Dionysus / Bacchus include [1] the kantharos wine cup or rhyton drinking horn; [2] a grape or ivy leaf wreath in his hair; [3] an effeminate mode of dress [most emphatic when the mature wine god is bearded]; [4] the thyrsus, his ivy wand; [5] satyrs, whose half-goat features and untamable propensity to drunkenness and lust are the natural attestations of wildness and bestiality; [6] panthers as wild companions, steeds or drawing his chariot; [7] maenads or bacchantes, women who dance ecstatically to Phrygian flutes, drums or cymbals and tear apart forest animals, usually deer, or cavort with wild cats; [8] ivy leaves and tendrils; [9] Silenus, his drunken old companion who always seems about to fall off his donkey in a stupor; [10] bearded in black figure vase scenes; and, lastly [10] serpents. T. B. L. Webster identifies core Dionysus scenes and his cult and Boardman also notes the presence of Dionysus on so many black figure scenes as probably due to "the function of so many of the vases involved". (26) These functions are connected to drinking either through the spring Anthesteria festival or its sacred marriage [Dionysus and Ariadne] as Richard Seaford, J. G. F. Hind [the wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne "was seen as a divine exemplar for mortal weddings"] and others attest, (27) or to celebrate the Great Dionysia festivals at Athens as M. Bieber has demonstrated. (28) Others have also examined the "animal vehicles" of Dionysus, including goats, serpents, ivy, fawns, etc. (29) T. B. L. Webster also distinguishes between the young, unbearded god and the older, bearded god, suggesting that it is the youthful Dionysus, as Titian shows here, who is involved with Ariadne [sometimes assaulting her] in the vase paintings of the 6th-4th c. BCE. (30)

In Titian's scene, the natural world of the painting seems to be divided diagonally between wildness and tameness. Titian has carefully coordinated the impenetrable density of woodsy greens and browns of the wild Dionysiac world through which the procession moves on the right without a given horizon. This is in contrast to the tamed landscape of cleared forest and island views with human habitations open to sky and sea on the left where Ariadne stands poised on the cliff, all planed to a visible horizon. What is more intense and exciting is that most of the stable horizon is distant to us while the woods are in the unstable foreground. Without warning, Titian places us closer to the wilder and unpredictable nature and wine god and his dangerous liberating tendencies [Dionysus Liber (31)]. It would also be remiss not to mention here examples of Titian's brilliant use of color, for which he was so famous, however faulty the perception `Michelangelo for form and Titian for colour', (32) a symbolic note as found in the garb of Ariadne. It is significant and perhaps not too programmatic that Ariadne's separate red, blue and white clothing blend to the prophetic wine color of Bacchus' robe at their meeting.

One of Titian's more inventive scenes in Bacchus and Ariadne is the confrontation between the satyr child [or faunus] and the dog. As a trophy of the wild orgiastic events in the woods where the Dionysiac rite of animal dismemberment usually take place, the satyr child drags a deer head on a string [probably belonging to the haunch of raw venison which one of the satyrs on the right is waving] whose blood and spoor the dog must have initially picked up. But now the dog - which the collar shows to be domesticated, perhaps as Ariadne's pet - having just smelled the little satyr, appears to be confused: it has nosed forward, but its upper body is slightly backing up away from its feet. Its stance seems to be asking cautiously "What is this creature [the satyr] which smells both half-humanly familiar and half-wildly unfamiliar?" As he looks outward to us, the satyr child is enjoying this joke at the dog's expense. Since there is no known classical precedent here, Titian has clearly inserted this little burlesque, perhaps for humorous effect, into the center foreground of the vignette.

Another curious element is the presence of the wild cats drawing the chariot of Bacchus, singularly noted by Panofsky. In antiquity, panthers [or leopards] are typical Dionysian steeds, e.g., the Greek mosaic at Pella with Dionysus on the panther, the Hellenistic House of the Muses [or Masks?] mosaic from Delos and the British Museum Roman Dionysus mosaic and Dionysus wall-painting fragment. (33) Although the word "leopard" [pardus, male or pardalis, female] does not appear anywhere in Ovid, Panofsky has imported a Greek quotation of Philostratus under the mention of panther, (34) where "panther" [panthera] occurs only once in Ovid: pictarumque iacent fera corpora pantherarum [Met. 3.669] in conjunction with Bacchus. As mentioned, the panther is a perfect animal for Dionysus because its name in Greek means ”all wild” pan + thera. Elsewhere in Ovid, lynxes are identified with the god in two other passages where the chariot of Bacchus is drawn by lynxes: colla lyncum [Met. 4.25], and lynxes were given by conquered India to the god: victa racemifero lyncas dedit India Baccho [Met. 15.413]. As Panofsky and others noted previously, tigers also draw the god's chariot: tigribus adiunctis aurea lora dabat in Ars Amatoria I. 550. (35) Confirming Ovidian use of tigers, or better, perhaps even deriving from the Ars Amatoria passage here in a literary borrowing from Ovid, it is specifically tigers in a Triumph of Dionysus mosaic at Sousse, Tunisia [circa 200 CE], who are shown drawing the chariot of Dionysus, where a panther is drinking [wine?] from a crater and a lion carries a baby satyr. (36) The presence of all three cats shows later Roman observational ability to distinguish them, even if Pliny earlier confused the distinction.

Figs. 5-6 Detail : Not Panthers but Cheetahs

But the cats in Titian's painting are certainly cheetahs, as can be seen by their unique eye markings, pattern of single spots [leopards have rosettes], smaller heads, longer legs and tufted tails [Figs. 5-6]. Panofsky explains the cheetahs in two ways: oriental Bacchus has returned from India with these cats and also that Titian would have wished to "gratify his patron's interest in rare, exotic animals... [an interest] so marked in Alfonso d'Este".(37) That may be true, although pard as the overall genus of spotted cats would have also easily included cheetahs in Renaissance bestiaries, most of which were derived in part first from Pliny and later from Physiologus [3rd. c. CE]. One of the most notable contemporary bestiaries is that of the most acute observer, Leonardo da Vinci, and was written in manuscript form mostly between 1489-1517 but was accessible in the 16th c. to only a very few readers [note the excerpts from Antonio de Beatis, 1517-18, a contemporary viewer mentioned in McCurdy's 1939 edition of Leonardo's Notebooks, p. 12]. Leonardo, who also was well-versed in Ovid's Metamorphoses [note p. 37 in McCurdy], describes leopards, panthers and tigers with some interesting conflations of the three large cats in a text which owes much to Pliny by mostly direct quotation. (38)

As noted earlier, since Ovid seems to mention panther only once in the retinue of Bacchus, otherwise having mentioned lynxes and yoked tigers pulling the god's chariot, it might be that Titian could be creative and satisfy the duke's taste for the exotic in his menagerie as well. There is, however, an additional note of irony here, as some have suggested, (39) that while motion is actively shown in all the other participants in the painting, these wild cats - specifically cheetahs, so capable of incredible speed - are the calmest beings in view, when by nature they should be the most active of all cats, not to mention more active than all the other elements in the picture. Could this be an intention of Titian that, by result of the god's exciting presence, the cheetahs are calm in comparison to all the other wilder Dionysiacs?

Panofsky, in his now famous Wrightsman Lectures [Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, published in 1969 as Problems in Titian: Mostly Iconographic] clarifies that the following generations were not so lucky in identifying Titian's actual subject matter in Bacchus and Ariadne:

"The subject of the painting is so unusual even in classical, let alone postclassical, art that Annabile [sp?] Roncagli - that gentleman who recorded the paintings illegally removed from Ferrara in 1598 - could not properly identify it: he describes the painting as `a picture of square format by Titian, in which Laocoon is depicted'." (40)

While we may not agree with Panofsky about a dearth of classical depictions of this subject, the opinion of Roncagli offers some evidence of either a general lack of knowledge about textual or visual classical iconography among Renaissance writers or inversely how careful Titian was in assembling textual and or visual representations of classical iconography [or both of the above]. Panofsky also notes a plaster cast of the Vatican group of Laocoon would have been accessible to Titian after 1520 (original excavated circa 1507) and does again suggest after Lomazzo a likely Catullus quotation of Bacchic votaries "girding themselves with coiling serpents"(41)

pars sese tortis serpentibus incingebant [Carmina LXIV 257-65]

Does this explain the enigmatic man, already mentioned, in the right foreground, the mysterious satyr-like figure grappling with the serpents? Is he actually part of the procession and is his tortured expression a Bacchic feature? Do we even know that this is a Laocoon allusion, as Otto Brendel maintained? (42) The Hellenistic period Laocoon group in question was excavated circa 1507 from Nero's Domus Aurea or Golden House near the Colosseum in Rome (43) and was immediately copied in drawings by such artists as the mid-16th c. Federico Zucchari. (44) The influence of this sculpture was enormous in the Neoclassical period. The Laocoon group also served for Johann Joachim Winkelmann, the arbiter of Neoclassicism, as the model for "an artistic wonder, in which the greatest beauty is born of the greatest suffering". (45) In his Laocoon of 1776, Gottfried Lessing also delineated the domains of poetry [time-related] and sculpture [space-related], (46) which still has some bearing now in this discussion on the mutually-inspiring relationship between literature and visual arts. This is nothing new: we are often reminded of continuing inspiration between distant cultures by Keats' likely `quotation' in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" to the mid-5th c. BCE Parthenon frieze of Phidias with its "heifer lowing at the skies".

Fig. 7 Laocoon sculpture group, sketch circa 1600, Lucio Massari (was Laocoon more familiar to Roncagli's day than Bacchus and Ariadne?)

As for the Laocoon group, it appears that the Catullus line mentioned above is too specific to ignore, as Wind also stated,(47) although the Laocoon group could certainly be used in conjunction with a literary source for Titian. This would underscore the otherwise coincidental nature of two equally important sources made all the more significant by bolstering each other individually.

While visual classical sources in sculpture and other art forms and the diffusion of classical iconography appear at first to be scanty in the early 16th c., this long-held view changed after pioneering studies such as Brendel's and continues with Mattusch,(48) where architecture and the availability of classical art in Renaissance Italy came to light through contemporary accounts showing major collections in the early 16th c. in addition to Cardinal Grimani's in Venice and those of the papal courts of Julius II and Leo X. (49) Phyllis Bober, Ruth Rubinstein and Leatrice Mendelsohn, among others, have also catalogued a full array of Classical artistic sources in the early 16th c. and beyond, and has demonstrated considerable collections of Classical sculpture in Italy at this time. (50) Jane Reid has also catalogued Renaissance use of classical myths with clues that significant artistic precedents existed before Titian. (51) Besides the Laocoon group, it was becoming increasingly possible for traveling artists to have seen various Roman sculptures and mosaics, wall-paintings, monuments, etc., as well as some Roman copies of Greek sculpture. Certainly much of the burgeoning impetus for rediscovery of classicism was provided by the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the efforts of pope Nicholas V [reigning 1447-1455] to acquire Greek manuscripts for the growing Vatican Library through scholar-translators like Poggio Bracciolini whose earlier Sylloges [1430] systematized classical inscriptions. Written guidebooks also conducted pilgrims around Roman classical monuments, one of the best being the Mirabilia of Magister Gregory [14th c.], with other texts such as those of Giovanni Dondi's Iter Romanum [14th c], and the antiquities dealer Cyriacus of Ancona's Itinerary [early 15th c.] as well as the later topographic studies and collections of Julius Pomponius Laetus [circa 1470] and the work of Flavio Biondo, De Roma Instaurata [1446], which compared ancient texts with ancient remains. (52)

Where would we most encounter Ovid in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne? As mentioned, G.H. Thompson claimed Ovid is the most direct source in Ars Amatoria I. 527-64 (although a similar vignette is his Ars Amatoria I.547-62), even more so than the Catullus Carmina LXIV [50-78, 116-43 & 254-64] or Ovid's Fasti [3.459-516] and Metamorphoses [8.174-82]. Edgar Wind, of course, suggested the Fasti along with Catullus. (53) All of these passages have been much mentioned as literary sources for Titian's painting. (54)

First, acknowledging the debt to Thompson, the Ars Amatoria I. 527-64 passage can be summarized thusly. Ariadne [the Gnosian maid], after being abandoned and wandering on Naxos [Dia], has just awakened and is disconsolate about Theseus when the noisy frenzied retinue of Bacchus comes. She faints in fear at the sight, including drunken Silenus, and is then revived by the god who, after giving his reins to the tigers, promises her marriage with the crown of stars as nuptial gift. Bacchus then leaps down from his chariot to offset her fear at the tigers and bears her away, accompanied by the chanting of the holy revelers, `Euhoe!' or `Hail, Hymeneus!'. Ovid concludes " so do the bride and the god meet on the sacred couch" [line 564] :

Sic coeunt sacro nupta deusque toro.

Thus, in Ars Amatoria I. 527 & ff. we see Titian could have known this Ovidian version of the event, since these features are common to both: Ariadne's loss over Theseus on Naxos, the Bacchic procession with drunken Silenus on his donkey and great cats pulling his chariot, the leaping of the god from chariot to earth, and the crown of stars. However, there is no serpent-writhed precedent in the foreground figure in Ovid's account here.

Second, following the earlier attribution of the late 16th c. Lomazzo and mid-17th c. Ridolfi, Catullus' Carmen LXIV with its Pelian embroidery depiction can also be summarized thusly. On the shore of Naxos, the just awakened and deserted Ariadne sees Theseus sailing away, and in her mindless desolation she has let all her garments slip down. In madness, she wanders up and down the island from rugged mountains to shore again. Elsewhere on the island, youthful Bacchus also wanders, seeking Ariadne with raging satyrs and Sileni crying 'Evoe!, Evoe!', where some in the Bacchic processions wave thyrsi, toss mangled limbs of animals, gird themselves with writhing serpents, beat timbrels or clash cymbals with uplifted hands.

Thus, in Catullus' poem we see Titian could have known this version of the event, since these features are common to both: Ariadne's loss over Theseus on Naxos, the frenzied Bacchic procession with satyrs and sileni, specifically with satyrs waving thyrsi or animal limbs, the writhing serpent-girded figures, and timbrels and cymbals. However, Ariadne seems to be unclothed here and Silenus on his donkey doesn't actually appear. There is no mention of the god's chariot, Ariadne's nuptial crown of stars [although it is mentioned in Carmen LXVI], or more important, no mention even of Ariadne actually meeting the god at all in Catullus LXIV. Noted by Lomazzo, Wind and Panofsky, the serpent-girded figure looms as perhaps the most important allusion to Catullus. Girded serpents, as mentioned previously, are not accidental to Bacchic processions [or thiasoi, initiate groups in Bober's terms, op. cit.], as can be seen in the famous white-ground Brygos Cup [Munich 2647] of the maenad clutching a baby panther with a live snake girdle as her head-band (Fig. 8), as Eva Keuls states "More often Maenads are depicted with a snake coiled around one arm, in reference to the red-figure Kleophrades cup [Munich 2344], a detail referred to as "snake handling" (see image below), (55) which common feature we see on many other vases, e.g., the Attic Red-figure amphora by the Altamure painter around 470-50 BC from Capua [MS5466 - University Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] where snakes also appear on the figure's head as a snake-girdled head-band.

Fig. 8 Brygos Cup (Munich 2647) of Maenad

An additional note of interest here is the discussion of Andrew Laird regarding ekphrasis in Catullus Carmen LXIV with the poet's deliberate comparison of verbal and visual media (56) in the Bacchus and Ariadne scene as well as others imaged in the Pelian woven garment. Laird defines ekphrasis as "literary description of visual works of art" and it is particularly important here in discussing how Catullus describes a visual text with words, much like Philostratus' Imagines and in contrast to possible Ovidian sources, where words themselves can be inspiration to Roman art and also in contrast to Titian's painting here if we accept that literary texts can be sources for this painting.

Third, acknowledging Edgar Wind's attribution, Ovid's Fasti 3.459-516 can be summarized thusly. Ariadne, doubly deserted by both Theseus and Bacchus on the `desert sands' of Naxos, now rails at the faithless god who had previously rescued her while she paces the island shore. The god, returning from India to Naxos a second time, comes up behind her. He has heard her complaint and sweeps her into his arms, promising her heaven and immortality since they have already shared the bed, and changing her jeweled crown into nine stars. Thus in Fasti 3.459-516 we see Titian could have also known this other Ovidian version of the event, since these features are common to both: Ariadne's loss over Theseus on Naxos, and the god returning to her with her crown transformed into stars. However, as Thompson argued, there is no riotous retinue of Bacchus and no chariot, and while many classical accounts, including Philostratus, allow for Ariadne to be found by Bacchus as asleep, not all require it, as Ars Amatoria I [and Catullus LXIV] make clear. T. B. L. Webster in Greece and Rome XIII.1, 1966, also evidences Ariadne as both asleep and awake through literature and vases, see infra, note 19 of this paper].

As Panofsky already noted, an important argument appears in the cheetahs as evidence of the second finding of Ariadne by Bacchus after his conquest of India (57) especially with Roman sarcophagi as possible models (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9 Bacchus (Dionysus) and Ariadne, Roman sarcophagus. 170-180 C.E., Rome: Terme Museum # 214

More telling according to Panofsky is Ovid's line Fasti 3. 508: "following her from behind" [a tergo forte secutus], where the Fasti here provide the only way "we can account for the averted posture of Ariadne".(58) Certainly there were plenty of Dionysian sarcophagi with the Indian Triumph of Bachus depicted, many of which survive today, (59) although it would be difficult to prove how many Titian might have seen, if any. As Tresidder pointed out, Raphael - from whom Alphonse d'Este had expected a painting of Bacchus and Ariadne before he died in 1520 - sent a sketch to the duke using panthers as expected in Indian triumphs of Bacchus, although Tresidder doubted that depicting an Indian triumph was a motive of Titian (Charles Hope suggests instead that it is possibly a sketch by Penni, one of Raphael's students).

Finally, in summarizing the Bacchus and Ariadne passage in Metamorphosis 8. 174 & ff., it is obviously a briefer version of the same story. Ariadne was abandoned on the island of Naxos by Theseus, and was distraught until Bacchus came and consoled her, wiping away her tears. To make her shine in heaven, Bacchus gave her a crown as she rose to heaven. Thompson argued against Wind here in that the crown was given on the first meeting with Bacchus, not the second, whereas T.B.L. Webster [in "Myth of Ariadne..., Greece and Rome, op. cit., pp. 25-6] cites variants between Hyginus and others where Ariadne received the crown upon her death or on Naxos respectively. This briefer version of Ovid [Met 8.174 & ff.] naturally lacks chariot, retinue, and much else of the extended passages, but Panofsky agrees with Thompson that the "difference between first and second encounters with Ariadne is deliberately obscured." (60) Showing that representative Roman images of Bacchus and Ariadne meeting (or other unspecific events between them) can also accommodate this variation, the Hermitage, St. Petersburg cameo is a good example (Fig. 10):

Fig. 10 Bacchus, Satyr and Ariadne, Roman sardonyx cameo, Hermitage, St. Petersburg 1st c. BCE-1st c. CE, 1.4 x 1.0 cm

Note that it is said to be a satyr (from Slade Collection acq. 1780, Hermitage Inv. #270) between Bacchus and Ariadne on the above cameo, but it is difficult to prove this. Perhaps more interesting as a probably coincidental link to Titian is the empty wine vessel pointing to Bacchus, also suggesting Ariadne has been thus prepared to meet the god.

Panofsky also accepts all four literary texts from Catullus to Ovid as an amalgam, which is perhaps the most reasonable suggestion on Titian's literary sources. Panofsky also comments on the availability of Ovid to Titian:

“Of the more than thirty publications of this kind [Ovid's Metamorphoses] which...appeared in Titian's lifetime, no less than fifteen were printed in Venice, among them the first illustrated edition (containing an Italian translation of the original text...published in 1497.” (61)

It is also clear that Ovid mentions Ariadne or Bacchus and Ariadne together in at least 6 texts related to the activity in Titian's painting. In addition to the three Ovid texts mentioned by Wind, Thompson and Panofsky, three of these other minor texts are familiar repetitions of material used elsewhere by Ovid but are seemingly not mentioned in previous discussions, texts which briefly mention Ariadne's abandonment.

In Ars Amatoria 3.35, Ariadne is also abandoned by Theseus in a desolate place as prey to sea-birds who would pick her from the shore:

Quantum in te, Theseu, volucres Ariadna marinas
Pavit, in ignoto sola relicta loco!

and in Ars Amatoria 3.157-58, deserted Ariadne is lifted to the god's chariot to the riotous cheers of satyrs:

Talem te Bacchus Satyris clamantibus euhoe
Sustulit in currus, Gnosi relicta, suos.

Also in Fasti 5.346, Bacchus is pleased to place in heaven the crown of stars given to Ariadne:

Baccho placuisse coronam
ex Ariadneo sidere nosse potes...

In Ovid, many of the other Bacchus appearances [where Bacchus is named directly in more than 75 lines, combined with another 26 lines where he is referred to as Liber] stress the retinue of the god and his attributes and both positive and negative human responses to his liberating nature. Bacchus is clearly one of Ovid's favorites, ranking in the Metamorphoses with Apollo, Diana, Minerva, Jupiter, Juno, and Venus for popularity of appearance. For depiction of sensuality or stratagems involving madness through wine, Bacchus becomes an Ovidian agent of change and transformation in many cameo appearances as well throughout the poet's work. (62) Especially for his erotic connections and the wildness of love and maenadism (63) with or without wine's relaxation of inhibitions and purported amatory effects, Bacchus is almost as necessary as Venus and Cupid in such love manuals as the Ars Amatoria, where Ovid as praeceptor amoris or "professor of love" [I.17], often with tongue in cheek playfulness, could not avoid utilizing Bacchus for expected maximum effect.

No doubt, with such a strong Bacchus presence in Ovid, many with satyrs, sileni and bacchantes, and with multiple references to Ariadne, the Gnosian bride of Bacchus, perhaps the real point to be made here is that Titian [and perhaps equally important, the Duke Alfonso d'Este] could have been impressed in various places with the importance given to this story by Ovid [as well as Catullus] and thus have amalgamated multiple texts for the painting.

Another thought surely worth considering, perhaps reversing the perceived order of influence to some degree, is the opinion that Ovid's mythological vignettes in poetry, especially the Metamorphoses, could be the source for much Roman mythological wall-painting at Pompeii and Herculaneum [between 10 BCE and 79 CE] (64) as well as the Renaissance depictions like Titian's. This would maintain the continuity of an Ovidian encyclopaedia of mythology, its legacy assured with vignettes as distillations of mutatio and change, an "action book" for artists [past as well as future, e.g., Titian] artists looking for subject matter in brief lapidary condensations such as Ovid employed, as Bernard Andreae shows for Ulysses in the Tiberian period. (65)

Although these literary sources may have been uppermost in Titian's imaginative reworking of the famous Ovidian story and Catullan poem, there could have been other visual stimuli alongside the Laocoon group so often mentioned, as amply demonstrated in the case made long ago by Otto Brendel, with many possible sources and models of classical art in Venice:

“It is not difficult to see that Titian was familiar with classical monuments from the beginning of his career, and that he grasped their style easily...it can be regarded as certain that Titian had a lasting interest in this ancient composition...The most conspicuous fact about his borrowings from ancient art is that the freedom with which Titian employed them increased with the years.”(66)

In this vein, another possible visual Classical model can be raised. In the Ian Jenkins and Kim Sloan catalog of the British Museum 1996 exhibition Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection, there is the so-called `Mantuan' Gem [Figure 51, pp. 102-3] from 1st or 2nd c. CE Rome with its later historic period gold relief "pressing" [Figure 141, p. 238, where the photo is curiously reversed unless it is not a pressing but a copy]. The gemstone shows "a female figure, probably Ariadne, asleep on a chair. She is approached by Pan, a young satyr and - on the left - Bacchus with a torch and thyrsus, supported by Silenus." Notable is the fact that it is a young Bacchus as in Titian's painting. That this gem is very close to some of the earlier Ovidian and Philostratus accounts and equally close to some of the later Roman sarcophagi is readily apparent. Also important is that any pressing or secondary relief from the original would have Bacchus approaching from the right - just as in Titian's painting. Naturally, not all is in agreement between the `Mantuan gem' and Titian. Ariadne is asleep on the gem and awake in Titian, and yet Titian could have known the many Ovidian and Catullan quotations to Ariadne just waking from sleep and have staged his painting at this more interesting moment. There is also an inert Bacchus on the gem in contrast to Titian, which seems to better follow the literary format except that the Villa of the Mysteries [which Titian could not have seen at Pompeii] repeats a similarly inert Dionysus. Finally there is the Pan in the gem, although the so-called Laocoon and the child satyr in the foreground could both be somewhat derivable from the gemstone Pan if his attributes [animation - not ithyphallic condition, bestial face, horns and goat legs] were divided among them.

Even more remarkable, however, is the likely reattribution by Ian Jenkins to the same Grimani family of Venice whose collections others have suggested Titian studied [see Perry, infra this paper, notes 69-72]: "The subject of the gem was also engraved in the sixteenth century by Battista Franco [died 1561], in a set of engravings thought to have been commissioned as a visual inventory of the powerful Grimani family in Venice."(67) Could Titian have seen this gem or a relief of it in Venice? Brendel also supports gemstones as possible sources by claiming that not all classical models used by Renaissance artists are sculptural but can include Roman coins and engraved stones. (68) Regarding the collection of antiquities, including marbles, bronzes and gemstones assembled by Cardinal Grimani in Venice by 1523, the date of his death, Marilyn Perry states:

“There can be little question but that Titian was familiar with these pieces...
as the foremost state painter Titian would surely have been allowed to study
the state's antiquities, if he wished...Cardinal Grimani's gemstones were in Venice
at his death in 1523.“ (69)

It would of course be an argument from silence to push this little-known but probable Venetian gem as a possible source of visual reference for Titian, although in reality it is no more tenuous [nor less an argument from silence] than the well-known Laocoon group in Rome so commonly indexed in discussions of this painting.

Although the iconography of Dionysus / Bacchus is well-established in the visual arts in extant classical wall and vase painting, sculpture and mosaics, arguably mostly excavated after Titian - with the possible exceptions of a version of the Laocoon group, the sculptures noted by Bober and Rubinstein and the probable Grimani collection Bacchus and Ariadne `Mantuan' gem which seem to have all been directly available to Titian in Venice in some form - and therefore mostly argumenti ab silentibus as models, it is probable that classical literary accounts such as Ovid, Catullus and Philostratus are more logical sources for Titian to follow. In this vein, Marilyn Perry's caveat [contra Brendel?] is apropos:

“For some years, a fashionable part-time pursuit of scholars engaged in celebrating the art of Titian has been the search for works of ancient sculpture known in the Renaissance by which to demonstrate, by means of comparative photographs, how particular ancient figures may be presumed to have been adapted by the master to serve new compositional purposes in his paintings...”(70)

Perry elaborates on the problem of exact identification in the face of enormous but changing 16th c. bequests [e.g., again, the Grimani Family of Venice], mutilations by contemporary sculptors, multiple examples and a fashion for classical provenance that may tend to "denigrate the artist's [own] imagination." [ibid, p. 190]. This trend of literary and, even more distilled, virtual artistic provenance may have reached an excessive height in Otto Brendel's earlier assignations ["borrowings"] of Titian's sources to specific classical art models (71) which Perry might find too rigid and, at the same time, too limiting on the genius of Titian. However, she concludes in a somewhat more Brendelian vein, by defining the terms of Titian's possible "borrowing" into an acceptable transformation of spirit rather than imitative form:

“Poetically, and perhaps temperamentally, Titian was attuned to the art of antiquity as no other artist of his time...[and, appropriately, in descriptions of classical gemstones]... We cannot, I suspect, entirely appreciate the awe, and the delight, with which Renaissance artists discovered the monumental pagan subjects...are we not at once transported to the same Arcadia where Titian's enamored shepherd pipes to his languid nymph?... Here is a genuine "borrowing" not of form but of spirit - an excursus upon the ancient invention by which the painter, in a lyrical nostalgia of his own, captures and recreates the absorbed enchantment...” (72)

Several questions yet remain regarding the possible types of visual and textual sources for this painting. There is still the unresolved puzzle of Titian reducing Ovid's nine stars in Ariadne's crown to eight. Ovid transforms the nine gems, gemmasque novem, to nine stars: aurea per stellas nunc micat illa novem [Fasti 3.515-6] where there is no mistake about the number, however uncertain the meaning. Titian, however, loses one star along the way. On one hand, some less cautious enquiries might raise the question whether this was a concealed political allegory to which we are not privy or an embedded Neoplatonic symbolism. On the other hand, it might be safer to ask whether this suggests a literary source variant, an as yet unknown Classical visual referent or just artistic caprice.

Other questions could be raised. In accord with T. B. L. Webster's analysis of Classical scenes of Dionysus and Ariadne cited earlier, how did Titian rightly choose to portray a youthful Bacchus here in his encounter with Ariadne, which seems to be logically derivable more from visual (and Roman) than from literary depictions? Also, if one accepts that Titian's satyrs are accurate [bestial faces, horns, and especially goaty-haired legs] in iconographic detail, where else would he have been able to portray satyrs at all solely from literary accounts? (73) Without disparaging his genius, could he have managed here without clear visual referents? Given his prodigious imagination, nearly all the other Bacchic elements could have been easily derived from literature but these last two questions may corroborate Brendel's and Bober's efforts in tracing visual sources for early Renaissance art in general and specifically for Titian's painting.

Finally, as noted earlier, it must be admitted that although Greek or Hellenistic visual referents could be direct models for Titian in that they would also be pre-Ovid [circa late 1st c. BCE.], it may never be known how many of the Roman wall-paintings, sculptures, gemstones, etc., might have been inspired by Ovid rather than the other way around. As a succinct yet inventive mythologist of ideally representational images, Ovid's popularity was probably nearly comparable in the Roman era as in the Renaissance. (74)

As Angus Easson said in 1969, there is no one single source in Ovid or other author for this incredible painting. Ovid's Fasti iii explains several ideas expressed in Titian's painting: describes the leap of Bacchus from his chariot, explains the constellation of Corona at upper left, and shows Bacchus meeting Ariadne after her lamenting for some time over her abandonment by Theseus. But Easson also revived the sense of Met. VIII.169-82 as a primary source, along with Catullus and Fasti III, because it it also mentions Theseus' ship and shows Ariadne awake in meeting Bacchus. He concludes: "we might accept that the picture is a simultaneous presentation of the first and last meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne." (75)

Fig. 11 Dionysus by the Kleophrades Painter (note Maenads on either side of Dionysus holding thrysoi and [bearded] serpents) Munich: Antikensammlungen # 8732, end of 5th c. BCE

Whether or not Titian had ample classical visual referents - perhaps the most memorable Greek one being the Kleophrades Painter (Fig. 11) above - for this magnificent painting of Bacchus and Ariadne alongside the many Ovidian and Catullus texts, it is our delight to recognize the continuity of classical images transformed in perhaps four tiers: by Titian from the Greek and Roman literary descriptions in poetry or art, including classical gemstones, sculptures and wall paintings which might in part derive from Ovid's accounts. With each iconographic transformation, we gain immeasurably through the imagination of artists such as Polygnotus, Ovid and Catullus and from Titian himself who then inspired Tintoretto and Poussin and still inspires others. Enduring myths - perhaps images of our closest ties to what is deep and eternal - have always evoked and will continue to evoke the genius of successive ages.

Notes

(1 ) Nicholas Penny in David Jaffé, ed. Titian. London: National Gallery, 2003, 101 ff, esp. 104; Sir Michael Levey. The National Gallery Collection, National Gallery Publications, London, 1987, 75. Out of a mythological cycle originally intended to total five paintings, two of the other "Bacchanale" paintings in d'Este's study were Bellini's Feast of the Gods [1514] whose landscape Titian finished [according to Vasari] and Titian's The Bacchanal of the Andrians [1518-19]. Edgar Wind's Bellini's Feast of the Gods, Harvard, 1948, is well worth the attention to Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne as well, esp. 56 & ff. [also see infra, Ovidian and Catullan texts on pages 8-14 of this paper]. Charles Hope also discusses the cycle in "The 'Camerini d'Alabastro' of Alphonso d'Este, I-II" in Burlington Magazine CXIII (1971), 641-50 & 712-21.
(2 ) C. Hope. `Poesie and Painted Allegories' in The Genius of Venice 1500-1600, Jane Martineau and Charles Hope, eds. Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1983, 36.
(3 ) Pausanias [Description of Greece: Phokis, X, xxiii.1 & ff. to xxix.7 & ff.] records many famous lost Greek paintings at Delphi: "Beyond the Cassotis [the rock by the temple of Apollo] stands a building with paintings of Polygnotus. It was dedicated by the Cnidians...Inside this building the whole of the painting on the right depicts Troy taken and the Greeks sailing away..." Pausanias goes on to discuss the Bacchus and Ariadne picture.
(4 ) Sir Herbert Read, ed. The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art and Artists, [1966] 1991 repr., 349, also relates the Zeuxis anecdote originally found in the Pliny passage. Other discussions of Zeuxis include Susan Woodford, Greece and Rome, Cambridge Introduction to Art, Cambridge, 1982, 49, 116. In another classical source about Zeuxis, who flourished around 400 BCE, Lucian's "Zeuxis" [Bk. VI] describes the "precision of his craftmanship" in the lost painting of the hippokentaur family which aroused such wonder in his viewers.
(5 ) Philostratus. [Imagines I.15] describes the most complete ancient Dionysian iconography: ivy cluster crown; nascent horn from the god's brow; leopard (panthera); flowered garments; thyrsus; fawn skins; bacchantes with cymbals; satyrs; and flute-playing. Philostratus is claimed as a descriptive source for Titian's painting in, to name a few, Edgar Wind, in Bellini's Feast of the Gods, Harvard, 1948, pp. 56, 60 and 62; Johannes Wilde in Venetian Art from Bellini to Titian, Clarendon, Oxford, 1974, p. 146; and Charles Hope himself, elsewhere in Titian, Jupiter Books, London, 1980, pp. 56, 59 and 60 in what he suggests as ecphrastic [see note 50 below] descriptions. Edgar Wind also tells the story [page 56] how Isabella d'Este, the duke's sister, tried vainly to recover her personal copy of Philostratus from her brother, who by now [1515-16] had begun to choose his own themes from this book which he would soon engage Titian to execute.
(6 ) Amedeo Maiuri. "Villa of the Mysteries", Roman Painting, Edition Albert Skiras, Geneva, 1953, pp. 50-63; K. Lehmann, "Ignorance and Search in the Villa of the Mysteries", Journal of Roman Studies LII, 1962, pp. 62-68; George Hanfmann, Roman Art, Norton, 1975, pp. 246-7.
(7 ) Maxwell Anderson. "Pompeiian Frescoes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Winter 1987/88 [1987], 17-36, on the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, esp. pp. 26-27 where in Room H it is noted "The panels on the far (north) wall described Dionysos and Ariadne (now lost)...and on the preceding page "[on the north wall] to the left was Dionysos reclining on Ariadne's lap."
(8 ) Doro Levi. Antioch Mosaic Pavements, Princeton, 1947, esp. pp. 141-9; also described in D.J. Smith, "[Roman] Mosaic", Martin Henig, ed., A Handbook of Roman Art, 1983, 120: "This depicted Dionysus and Ariadne, with a satyr and a maenad in narrower flanking panels."
(9 ) P. Paschini. "Le Collezioni archeologiche dei prelati Grimani del Cinquecento" Rendiconti della Pontifica Accademia Romana di Archaeologia V, 1927, pp. 149-90, as cited in M. Perry, infra, n. 6 , p. 188.
(10 ) M. Perry. “On Titian’s Borrowings from Ancient Art: A Cautionary Case.” Tiziano e Venezia, Consegno Internazionale di Studi. Nero Pozza, ed. Venice. 1976., p. 188.
(11 ) W. Pater. Essays on Literature and Art, J.M. Dent, London, 1973 ed.
(12 ) L. Burn, Greek Myths: The Legendary Past. British Museum, 1990., p. 75.
(13 ) C. Hope, op. cit., 36. Not the least of which erudition could be Neoplatonic ideals, such as divine love, vaguely or openly embedded in the painting [also see Edgar Wind, op. cit., 60-1].
(14 ) C. Hope, ibid., 36.
(15 ) J. Henle, Greek Myths: A Vase Painter's Notebook. Indiana University Press, 1973, 6; also in Margaret Bieber, The History of the Greek and Roman Theater. Princeton University Press, 1961, 1, 8-10, and 26.
(16 ) C. Hope, op. cit., 36
(17 ) ibid., suggesting the duke was not satisfied with Bellini's inauthentic intrepretation of Ovid's episodes [either Fasti I. 415 or Met. 9.347] of Priapus waking the nymph Lotis who was changed into the flower given her name [Lotus]. In any case, Bellini's bacchanale in Feast of the Gods also contains Silenus and his donkey and satyrs, with perhaps Hermes present, judging by the petasos traveler's hat and caduceus. Elsewhere, in Titian, Jupiter Books, London, 1980, 54, Charles Hope says "Bellini's original composition was not based on the Fasti at all. Instead he relied on an Italian paraphrase of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which gives an entirely different version of the legend in which all the characters are citizens of Thebes rather than gods and nymphs."
(18 ) G. H. Thompson, "The Literary Sources of Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne." The Classical Journal LI.6, 1956:259-64. This study and that of Erwin Panofsky [also see infra, note 30], Problems in Titian: Mostly Iconographic, Phaidon, 1969, pp. 141-44, are the best discussions of the painting from classical literary sources. Both also mention Edgar Wind, op. cit., Bellini's Feast of the Gods, Harvard, 1948, with Wind's identification of Ovid's Fasti 3. 507-08 as additional literary influence on Titian's painting.
(19 ) T. B. L. Webster, "The Myth of Ariadne from Homer to Catullus", Greece and Rome XIII.1, 1966, 22-35; Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 2, 1896, "Ariadne", 803-11.
(20 ) H. D. Rouse, ed. and tr. Nonnos: Dionysiaca, vols. 1-3. Harvard, Loeb Classics, 1995. This 5th c. Egyptian recounting of the life of Dionysus relates his birth, Olympian entry, activities among mortals, amorous adventures [including Ariadne], and his conquest of India.
(21 ) Amedeo Maiuri, op. cit., p. 81
(22 ) Dr. Jennifer March, formerly of the Greek Dept., University College, University of London, and previous Editor of the Bulletin of Classical Studies first made this interesting suggestion to me [pers. comm.] about the yellow krokotos in 1990. As appealing as this is, and completely in keeping with the story, it may, however, require too arcane a connection to expect Titian to know this iconographic subtlety even though no better explanantion exists. Unless a classical literary reference is found, it may be coincidence or reading too much into the Renaissance symbolism, although we would certainly appreciate the irony of Ariadne's exchange of courtesanship with Theseus for sacred marriage with the god. On the other hand, in perhaps just as tenuous an explanation, in the Fasti 3. 493, Ariadne complains that a `fair concubine' [candida paelax], a captive mistress from India, has been preferred to herself by Bacchus after his conquest of India. Could this other captive concubine mistress of Bacchus [to be now forgotten by the god] be the wearer of the yellow courtesan's garment? Or is yellow the color of farewell here to Theseus?
(23 ) Martin Nilsson, A History of Greek Religion, Clarendon, Oxford, 1925. p. 205:
"...the sense of being filled with a higher, divine power. This is the literal meaning of the Greek word `enthusiasm', the state in which `god is in man'." Also note Ellen Reeder, Pandora: Women in Classical Greece, with Carol Benson's section on "Maenads", 381-91, Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore and Princeton University, 1995
(24 ) H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology, Methuen, 1928, 149-157; Bieber, op. cit., 1; Walter F. Otto, Dionysos, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965; Marcel Dettiene. Dionysos Slain, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979; also see C. Penglase, Greek Myths and Mesopotamia, Routledge, 1994, pp. 108, 153, 161, 173.
(25 ) John Boardman, Athenian Black Figure Vases. Oxford University Press, 1974, 218 and many Dionysus or Dionysiac scenes including pls. 66.1, 88, 89, 104, 167, 171, 181, 222, 247, 272 288, 289, and 291; also John Boardman, Greek Art, Thames and Hudson, [1964], 1991 repr., esp. pl. 84, the Amasis painter black figure amphora Paris [Bibliotheque Nationale] of Dionysus and maenads [circa 540 BCE]; pl. 177, 172, the early 4th c. BCE red-figure Meleager Painter kylix showing a Dionysus and a possible Ariadne, also pl. 154, 152, with the Dionysiac scene on the late 4th c. BCE Derveni krater in Macedonia; and 134, pl. 136, the famous Praxiteles Hermes and infant Dionysus sculpture [circa 340 BCE] from the Temple of Hera at Olympia, to name a few. Additional references include J. Henle [see note 15]; Philostratus [see note 5]; Mortimer Wheeler, Roman Art and Architecture, Thames and Hudson, [1964] 1991 repr., especially the Dionysiac scene on the Mildenhall Treasure, p. 206, pl. 192; George Hanfmann, Roman Art, Norton, 1975, pp. 117-18 and pl. 128-29 on pp. 210-11 with Dionysiac sarcophagi showing Bacchus riding a large cat in procession [also note Panofsky's point on page 141, n 7] as well as 245-46 on the Villa of the Mysteries wall-paintings of Bacchic mysteries.
(26 ) T. B. L. Webster, Potter and Patron in Classical Athens, Methuen, London, 1972, pp. 132-35; John Boardman, op. cit., Athenian Black Figure Vases, pp. 109 & 188-89.; Boardman, pers. comm., London, 1996.
(27 ) Richard Seaford, "The Imprisonment of Women in Greek Tragedy", Journal of Hellenic Studies CX, [1990] pp. 76-90, esp. p. 85, "[there is] ritual, in the controlled, temporary ceding by the Athenian `king' (the archon called basileus) of his wife for the sacred marriage to the newly arrived Dionysus at the Anthestheria"; also L. Burns, op. cit. p. 9.; John Boardman, op. cit. Athenian Black Figure Vases, p. 213; and Margaret Bieber, op. cit., p. 52; also note John G.F. Hind, "The Portland Vase: new Clues towards old solutions", Journal of Hellenic Studies CXV, [1995] p. 154, on the importance of Dionysus and Ariadne myth on the sacredness of Greek marriage. Walter Burkert, op. cit., Greek Religion, pp. 239-40, points out the central significance of Dionysus and Ariadne to sacred marriage more than any other myth coupling. Walter Otto, op. cit., Dionysos, pp. 180-88, also acknowledges the Ariadne cultus. Additionally, Greek scenes of Dionysus and Ariadne were not uncommon, e.g. Attic Black Figure neck amphora, c. 530 BC, # L-64-39, on loan to the University Museum, Pennsylvania from the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art, also depicting Dionysus along with a woman said to be Ariadne, and two satyrs fighting [although one is said to be Hermes].
(28 ) Bieber, op. cit., 2-6, Chs. 2-4, and esp. 52-54 & ff. Bieber also shows several Dionysus and Ariadne scenes including the famous Pronomos - Satyr Play vase in Naples where the divine couple recline on a couch beneath an uncoiling vine [Figure 31] and the "wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne" in the children's oinochoe in the Metropolitan Museum [Figure 218]; as well as multiple Dionysian vase scenes such as the famous Cleophrades cup in Munich [Figures 21-4], and sculpture such as Roman sarcophagi from the Capitoline [Figures 92-3]. Another good example of Dionysus and Ariadne on Greek vases is the early 5th c. small San Francisco black figure amphora [# 63.4] in the Palace of the Legion of Honor collection.
(29 ) E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley, 1951, esp. 277.
(30 ) T. B. L. Webster, op. cit., "The Myth of Ariadne from Homer to Catullus," Greece and Rome XIII.1, 1966, 28-9.
(31 ) Marvin Meyer, ed. The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook, Harper-San Francisco, 1987, 260; Walter Burkert. Greek Religion, Harvard [and Basil Blackwell], 1985, esp. pp. 239-40; Dodds, op. cit., pp. 273, 279.
(32 ) John Steer, "Titian and Venetian Colour", in The Genius of Venice 1500-1600, Jane Martineau and Charles Hope, eds. Royal Academy of Art, London, 1983, pp. 41-43, esp. p. 41.
(33 ) British Museum, both in Gallery 70. The late Roman mosaic, perhaps a copy of the Delos mosaic, shows and names Dionysos (in late Greek with a double lunate sigma “C”) riding on a leopard. The Roman wall-painting shows a youthful Bacchus [on the left] and Silenus [on the right] standing together, Bacchus with astonished eyes and pouring wine from a small cup into the mouth of a leopard at his right hand.
(34 ) Erwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian: Mainly Iconographic. The Wrightsman Lectures at New York University Institute of Fine Arts, Phaidon, 1969, esp. 141-44.
(35 ) Roy J. Deferrari, Sr. Inviolata Barry, and Martin McGuire. A Concordance of Ovid. Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, 1939. Note the apparent lack of pardus in Ovid with only one mention of panther [p. 1378] in the section on Pentheus [Met. 3.669] "pictarumque iacent fera corpora pantherarum."
(36 ) D. J. Smith, "[Roman] Mosaics", Martin Henig, ed., A Handbook of Roman Art, Phaidon, [1983] 1995 repr., 126, pl. 98.
(37 ) Panofsky, op. cit., 143-44. Hope, op. cit., 1980, p. 59, notes "the pair of cheetahs are almost certainly portraits of animals in the duke's menagerie".
(38 ) "A Bestiary" from Leonardo da Vinci's Notebooks [ed. by Edw. McCurdy, Braziller, New York, 1939] esp. pp. 1087-88, combines some characteristics under "lions, leopards, panthers, tigers" but specifically notes on "the Panther in Africa: This has the shape of a lioness, but it is taller in the leg and slimmer and longer and quite white, marked with black spots after the manner of rosettes" [H 22 v and 23 r]. Also under "Tiger: it bears some resemblance to the panther from the various spots on its skin; and it is an animal of terrifying speed" [H 23 v. and 24 r]. Could this more easily describe a cheetah as well? In the same passage on tigers, Leonardo exchanges the word "panther" for "tiger" although the description continues on the tiger narrative. Much of Leonardo's description regarding panthers and tigers seem to come directly or indirectly from Pliny, Historia Naturalis, Book VIII.xxiii. 62-64, especially about the attractive sweet breath of the panther and the terrific speed of the tiger, VIII. xxv.66. Pliny also distinguishes the leopard in Africa as a tree-climbing animal, which "leopards crouch in the thick foliage of the trees and hidden by their boughs leap down on to animals passing by, and stalk their prey from the perches of birds." XCIV.202. For other Renaissance bestiaries, note Joseph Berruerius, Bestiarius. Savona, 1524. Also see Johann Stabius, De Labyrintho. W. Huber, Nuremburg, 1510; Jac[o]po de Barberi, Pianti di Venezia, Venezia 1500; Bernhard von Breydenbach, Reise ins Heilege Land. Petrus Drach, Speyer, 1495. Although later, also see Edward Topsell, A History of Four-Footed Beasts. E. Cotes, London, 1658. Modern bestiaries should include Ernst and Johanna Lehner, A Fantastic Bestiary. Tudor, New York, 1969 and Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings. Dutton, New York, 1969, esp. 39, 178-79, 229. Notice Borges' comment: "In medieval bestiaries the word `panther' deals with a very different animal from the carnivorous mammal of present-day zoology" where he also notes the panther's melodious voice and all-spice breath [p. 178].
(39 ) among them a student of mine who, noting the apparent calmness of these cats in contrast to the other persons in the Bacchic processional that, with the reputation of the raving Bacchantes for tearing animals apart and uprooting trees, opined "I'd rather take my chances on the cats than the wild women."
(40 ) Panofsky, op. cit., 141.
(41 ) ibid.
(42 ) Otto Brendel, "Borrowings from Ancient Art in Titian", The Art Bulletin XXXVII.2, June, 1955, p. 118.
(43 ) Claude Moatti, The Search for Ancient Rome. Thames and Hudson, London, 1993, 28-9, 39-40, 80-1.
(44 ) ibid., 39, Moatti includes the Zucchari drawing with an artist [Zucchari] also sketching the Laocoon group.
(45 ) Johann Joachim Winkelmann, History of Ancient Art, Amsterdam, 1764.
(46 ) Note Andrew Laird, "Sounding out Ecphrasis: Art and Text in Catullus 64" The Journal of Roman Studies LXXXIII, 1993, p. 19, in his discussion of Sir Robert Phillimore's 1874 translation of Lessing's Laocoon; also Walter Pater, op. cit., pp. 43 and 143 n2
(47 ) Edgar Wind, op. cit., p. 57.
(48 ) Otto Brendel, op. cit., "Borrowings from Ancient Art in Titian," The Art Bulletin, XXXVII.2, June, 1955, pp. 113-25. Also note Ian Jenkins and Kim Sloan. Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and his Collection. British Museum, 1996. [The author of this paper on Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne presented a paper at the British Museum Hamilton colloquium in April, 1996, on 18th c. collection of alpine Roman antiquities]. It is apparent that many collectors, vase lovers and pioneering scholars existed in Italy [and elsewhere] long before Hamilton. Especially note the Grimani family collection in Venice [pre-1523] (see this paper, infra n. 69-72) particularly of sculpture and gemstones. Other collections of Roman sculpture and inscriptions include those noted by Franciscus Bonivard [prior of S. Victoris, circa early 16th c. in Geneva], Johann Stumpf [circa early 16th c. in Zurich], Aegidius Tschudi [circa early 16th c. in Glarus], [these last three and the following mentioned by Theodore Mommsen, ed., Inscriptiones Confoederationis Helveticae Latinae, 1854, pp. XI-XVII], and Gabriel Symeon's Les illustres observations antiques en son dernier voyage d'Italie l'an 1558, Lyon. Claude Moatti has also described the 16th c. Farnese family excavation and collection of Roman sculptures in the Baths of Caracalla, the Lamia family's collection beginning with excavation of the Aldobrandini Marriage [representing Dionysus and Ariadne?] [c. 1582] from their gardens in Rome, the "Father of Etruscology" Thomas Dempster [early 17th c.] travels through Etruria and subsequent publications, the Neapolitan jurist and vase collector Giuseppe Valetta [late 17th c.], are just a few. Also note Jean Jacque Boissard's Topographia Romae, Frankfurt, 1627, which contains scores of sculptures, monuments and inscriptions well known for at least a century before he compiled his study. R.M. Cook, Greek Painted Pottery, Methuen, London, 1960, p. 288-89 has also provided historic details regarding the evaluation of Greek pottery in the 16th and 17th c. in Naples, Rome and the rest of Italy. Carol Mattusch states in The Fire of Hephaistos, Harvard University Art Museums, 1996, p. 17: "In Cellini's day, there were already a great many collections of ancient Greek and Roman statues, including those by Niccolo Niccoli, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, Cyriacus of Ancona, Cosimo de Medici, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere [Pope Julius II], and Lorenzo di Medici. Artists studied these collections, but they also collected their own statues or fragments of statues, which they sketched and used as models for their own work. Among the artist-collectors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Andrea Mantegna, and Michelangelo." So why not Titian?
(49 ) C. Moatti, op. cit., esp. 40.
(50 ) Phyllis Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources. Oxford University Press, 1977, esp. 105-25 with Bacchus motifs. Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne is also mentioned in context with Orestes sculptures [also mentioned by Panofsky, op. cit., 141-44] which Titian may have integrated into the movements and posture of Bacchus, as Bober and Rubinstein suggest on 138. There are at least 23 Classical Bacchic sculptures catalogued by Bober and Rubinstein as visible to Renaissance artists, especially Roman sarcophagi and other marbles, including one "Bacchic Dancers" candelabrum base which has been in Venice apparently since at least the death of Cardinal Grimani. It is even possible that this marble was seen by Titiian before his painting of Bacchus and Ariadne, where it could have influenced his Bacchic procession. [see 121-2]. Following Brendel, op. cit., 118, Bober and Rubinstein also cite an "Orestes sarcophagus" with two poses of Orestes which they maintain [125, pl. 106] was conflated into the one pose of Bacchus in this painting. Leatrice Mendelsohn, Abstracts of the 13th International Bronze Congress, Harvard University Art Museums, 1996, 56, also carefully detailed "Citation of Ancient Bronze Fragments in Renaissance Painting" with ample evidence from contemporary testimony.
(51 ) Jane Davidson Reid's Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, vol. 1, Oxford, 1993, 204-13, under "Ariadne": omits Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne but mentions the painting under "Bacchanalia", 258-71. She includes Piero di Cosimo's Theseus and Ariadne, painted before his death in 1521, as a mythological painting and also notes a literary precedent in Boccaccio's [1355-73?] De Casibus vivorum illustrium [The Fates of Illustrious Men] with "de Theseo rege Athenarum" which relates Ariadne's plight. Also important items recorded in Reid are literary precedents in F. Colonna's literary romance Hypnerotomachia Polifili in 1499 in Venice [with bacchanalia]; Andrea Mantegna's Bacchanale with Silenus in 1494; Dosso Dossi's [Venetian court painter of Alfonso d'Este] Bacchanale in 1515; and Dossi's Portrait of Alfonso d'Este as a Bacchic Votary without a date provided. These are all potentially valuable mythological sources for Titian.
(52 ) C. Moatti, op. cit, pp. 22-52. Commencing with the knowledgable Einsedeln Itinerary [8-9th c. CE], and culminating with the sack of Rome in 1527 by Charles V, Moatti provides a veritable pedigree of new classicism which this paragraph summarizes.
(53 ) Edgar Wind, op. cit. , p. 57.
(54 ) ibid., pp. 56-58; Thompson, op. cit. . pp. 262-4; Panofsky, op. cit., pp. 141-44; Johannes Wilde, op. cit., p. 146 & ff.; Charles Hope, op. cit., 1980 and 1983, to name a few.
(55 ) Eva Kuels, The Reign of the Phallus, Harper and Row, New York, 1985, discussion on Figures 297-8..
(56 ) Andrew Laird, op. cit., pp. 18-30.
(57 ) Panofsky, op. cit., p. 143
(58 ) ibid., p. 142
(59 ) Anna Marguerite McMann, "Two Fragments of Sarcophagi in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Illustrating the Indian Triumph of Dionysus", The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery XXXVI, Baltimore, 1977, pp. 123-36; also Bober and Rubinstein, op. cit., numbers 76 [p. 111], 77 [p. 112], 78 [p. 113].
(60 ) Panofsky, 143.
(61 ) ibid., p. 141
(62 ) W. Brewer, Ovid's Metamorphoses in European Culture, 1933; T.F. Higham, "Ovid: Some Aspects of his Character and Aims." Classical Review, 105 [1934]. Hermann Frankel, Ovid: A Poet Between Two Worlds, Berkeley, University of California, 1945; L.P. Wilkinson, Ovid Recalled, Cambridge, 1955; A.S. Hollis, Ovid: Metamorphoses Book VIII, Oxford, Clarendon, 1970, pp. xiv-xix. For discussion of English translations of Ovid texts, R.J. Tarrant suggests Guy Lee's translations [Guy Lee, tr. Ovid's Amores, John Murray, London, 1968] as the best available. See R.J. Tarrant, Greek and Latin Lyric Poetry in Translation, American Philological Association, 1972, esp. pp. 47-49; Alan Mandelbaum, tr., The Metamorphosis of Ovid, Harcourt, Brace, 1993.
(63 ) Richard Seaford, op. cit., "The Imprisonment of Women in Greek Tragedy", Journal of Hellenic Literature, CX, [1990], p. 85
(64 ) Bober and Rubinstein, op. cit., pp. 36-51, esp. 105-25; Antony Raubitschek, pers. comm., 1996.
(65 ) Bernard Andreae, The Art of Rome, 1977; and especially in Praetorium Speluncae: L'Antro di Tiberio a Sperlonga ed Ovidio. Rubbettino Editore, Rome, 1995, p. 28-32, 58-61, 109-14, especially pp. 40, 42-45.
(66 ) Otto Brendel, op. cit., pp. 115, 118, 125.
(67 ) Ian Jenkins cites E. Lemburgh-Ruppelt, `Die beruhmte Gemma Mantovani und die Antikensammlung Grimani in Venedig', Xenia, I, 1981, pp. 85-108.
(68 ) Otto Brendel, op. cit., p. 116.
(69 ) Marilyn Perry, op. cit., pp. 187-91,
(70 ) ibid., esp. p. 187.
(71 ) Otto Brendel, op. cit. pp. 113-25.
(72 ) Perry, op. cit., pp. 190, 191.
(73 ) Actually, in comparison to Titian's satyrs, in Piero di Cosimo's Misfortunes of Silenus, c. 1500, [Levintritt Collection, Harvard's Fogg Museum] better and truer goat legs are depicted on Cosimo's satyrs who pester and make fun of a very human and young Silenus. Perhaps it is more important to ask where Cosimo's models were [if not the Pan figures in the many Triumph of Bacchus vignettes] ?
(74 ) Bernard Andreae, op. cit., pp. 40-45.
(75 ) Angus Easson. "The Source of Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 32 (1969) 396-397.

Photo credits: Figs. 1 & 5, National Gallery, London, website; Fig. 2, Sousse Museum, Tunisia, Fig. 4, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Napoli; Fig. 6, www.edancedesign.com/images/animals/cheetahs.jpg; Fig. 7, Bryn Mawr Graduate Group Interdepartmental Seminar in Theory, www.brynmawr.edu/gradgroup/historyofart/images/GSEM_679_Laocoon.htm; Fig. 8 www.library.umass.edu/benson/images/jbgc15.jpg; Fig. 9, Terme Museum, Rome, Sculpture # 214; Fig. 10 ancientrome.ru/art/artworken/img.htm?id=937, Fig. 11, Munich Antikensammlungen # 8732

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