A False Bacchus Crowning Drunkards

Velázquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez)|Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

1778 · Etching · Drawings and Prints

Rendering Velázquez’s complex composition in etching presented Goya with a considerable challenge. His determination to analyze and understand the painting—its interlocking forms and varied expressions—is evident in his preparatory drawing. Notwithstanding Goya’s careful observation, both the drawing and the print depart from the model. In the print, the figures are distinctly rougher and more brazen. Velázquez’s Bacchus is a fleshy, distracted youth, shown crowning a figure who kneels before him. Goya rendered the god as more mature and shrewd, in league with those around him, whose inebriation is also more pronounced. These modifications appear intentional; Goya may have felt empowered to submit his own reading, just as Velázquez did by surrounding his classical god with figures that were recognizably of the seventeenth century.

Artist

Velázquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez)|Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

Date

1778

Medium

Etching

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1924