Detail of the Head of Bacchus

On the night of 24 December 1734 the Alcazar of Madrid burned. The old royal palace held more than 2,000 paintings and about 500 of them were lost. Ribera's Triumph of Bacchus hung in the room where the king dined, and it did not survive whole. Three pieces of the canvas were cut out and kept, and this head is one of them. The ivy and vine in the hair are what name him as the wine god. The Prado dates the lost picture to 1636 and describes it as a composition taken from a Hellenistic relief, showing Bacchus arriving on earth; it was probably painted to hang beside a Sacrifice to Bacchus by the Neapolitan painter Massimo Stanzione, which is also in the museum. The second surviving fragment, a woman seen half length, is in the Prado as well. The third is in Bogota.