Drunken Silenus

We remember Van Dyck for cool, elegant portraits of kings and courtiers, so this fat, staggering drunk comes as a surprise. He painted it around 1620, barely 21 years old and still working in the Antwerp studio of Peter Paul Rubens, the most famous painter in Europe. The master is all over it, the swirling bodies, the warm heavy flesh, the taste for a mythological romp. Silenus was the old tutor of the wine god Bacchus, and here he is so drunk he can hardly stand and has to be held upright by his companions. Within a few years Van Dyck would leave for Italy and grow into the polished manner that made his name. He came back to this tipsy old man more than once, and another version of the scene hangs in Brussels.