The Drunken Silenus

Rubens had spent eight years in Italy soaking up Titian and the antique, and by around 1618 he was back in Antwerp running the busiest workshop in Europe. This is Silenus, the fat old tutor of the wine god Bacchus, staggering along blind drunk and held upright by his companions while goats and a small satyr crowd in. It began as a smaller picture of the reeling figure alone. A few years later Rubens enlarged the panel himself and painted in the noisy procession, working the added stretches with the loose, suggestive touch he had taken from studying Titian in Madrid and Rome. Look along the edges and you can still find the seams where the wood was extended.