Youth Playing a Pipe for a Satyr

Youth Playing a Pipe for a Satyr

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Il Grechetto)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The artist ventured here with spellbinding bravura into the bucolic world of satyrs and nymphs, attaining the effect of a deliberately unfinished easel painting. The satyr has finished playing his shepherd's pipe and sprawls out with hedonistic abandon as he listens to the beautiful youth take his turn on a pipe. The satyr may represent Pan or Marsyas, while the youth may be Apollo, Olympos, or Daphnis. None of the Classical myths provides an entirely consistent fit with the composition, but it evokes a gentle, idyllic contest. It may allude to the contrast between the passionate spirit of the Dionysian (as represented by the satyr) and the beauty and clarity of reason of the Apollonian (the youth), which, according to Renaissance and Baroque humanists, were the two opposing impulses of artistic creativity.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Youth Playing a Pipe for a SatyrYouth Playing a Pipe for a SatyrYouth Playing a Pipe for a SatyrYouth Playing a Pipe for a SatyrYouth Playing a Pipe for a Satyr

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.