Bacchanal with Silenus

Andrea Mantegna

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

While the precise meaning of Mantegna's Bacchanals has eluded scholars, the most decisive event occurring in each is a coronation—an act that, by Mantegna's time, was often linked with the recognition of poetic gifts. In this engraving, the figure being crowned is clearly Silenus, the tutor of Bacchus, known for his wisdom as well as his drunkenness. In representing Silenus, any artist living in Mantua, the city of Virgil's birth, would have had in mind the poet's sixth Eclogue, in which Silenus is roused from drunken sleep by two satyrs and a nymph, bound with his own garlands, and forced to sing. His song of the creation and the ways of nature incited the fauns and wild beasts to move in a stately dance.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art