The Bacchanal of the Andrians

Titian painted this in the early 1520s for a small private room in the ducal palace at Ferrara, a chamber Duke Alfonso d'Este was filling with pictures of the ancient gods at play. The subject comes from a late Greek writer's description of a lost painting, set on the island of Andros, where Bacchus loved the place so much that a stream ran with wine instead of water. So everyone here is drinking from it. Figures sing, sprawl and stumble, a nymph sleeps naked in the lower right, and a small boy relieves himself at the front with complete unconcern. A sheet of music floating among them carries a real, singable round whose words say that whoever drinks and does not drink again knows nothing of drinking. Later the painting was quietly taken from Ferrara by a cardinal, and the theft only came to light years afterward.