Titian, Meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne, 1522-23, Camerino d’Alabastro, Palazzo Ducale, Ferrara

Between 1520-23 Titian painted Bacchus and Ariadne, one of a series of mythological works for the ducal study [studiolo, the so-called 'Camerini d'Alabastro'] in the castle of Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. (1) [Fig. 1]. Although the room was disassembled in 1598 after the d'Este family line in Ferrara died out and the castle reverted to the pope, the duke wanted these mythological paintings:

“to be explicitly all'antica in both style and content; indeed the subjects were largely based on descriptions of lost classical paintings." (2)

This is an intriguing idea where it might be asked which lost paintings and which ancient authors might describe them? This is an immediately reminder of Aristotle's comparison of the paintings of Zeuxis and Polygnotus [Poetics 6.27-28] or the paintings of Polygnotus at Delphi as recorded by Pausanias in his Description of Greece, Book 10.xxv.1 & ff., especially the Polygnotus portrait of Ariadne in 10.xxix.4 from the Lesche of Cnidos:

“You see a painting of Ariadne. Seated on a rock, she is looking at her sister Phaedra...Ariadne was taken away from Theseus by Dionysus, who sailed against him with superior forces, and either fell in with Ariadne by chance or set an ambush to catch her. This Dionysus was, in my opinion, the first to invade India.” (3)

Another Pausanias passage [Book 20. xx. 3-4] describes the paintings in the temple of Dionysus Eleuthereus in the theater precinct in Athens:

“The oldest sanctuary of Dionysus is near the theater...There are paintings here...Pentheus and Lycurgos paying the penalty of their insolence to Dionysus, Ariadne asleep, Theseus putting out to sea, and Dionysus on his arrival [at Naxos] to carry off Ariadne.”

This passage is similar in part to what Titian has depicted in Bacchus and Ariadne. Other source possibilities also abound. In Pliny [Nat. Hist. XXXV. 36, 65 & ff.] there is the story about Zeuxis that his painted grape clusters were so real that even birds tried to peck at his grapes, (4) where, admittedly speculative, such clusters might reference a painted Dionysian scene, since it was in a theater context. The probable source of the lost art applicable to Titian's work here, however, is usually thought to be that series of Naples wall-paintings described by Philostratus:

“Nor yet is it enough to praise the painter for things for which someone else too might be praised; for it is easy to paint Ariadne as beautiful and Theseus as beautiful; and there are countless characteristics of Dionysus for those who wish to represent him in painting or in sculpture...Having arrayed himself in fine purple and wreathed his head with roses, Dionysus comes to the side of Ariadne.“ (5)

Naturally, while extant Roman wall paintings or mosaics often have Dionysus (or Bacchus) and Ariadne or their sacred marriage as subjects [e.g., the 1st c. BCE Bacchus hieros gam[e]os panel in the Villa of the Mysteries, (6) the painting of Bacchus and Ariadne known from Boscoreale but now also lost; (7) and the 3rd c. CE Antioch mosaic pavements of Dionysus and Ariadne in the House of Dionysus and Ariadne, (8) to name only a few], many of these would have come to light only after the 18th c. [especially at Pompeii and Herculaneum], long after Titian. Even though many of the ancient paintings may now be lost or their influences untraceable, the classical iconography of the likely subject matter is still accessible. Although the question of lost classical paintings is quarry obviously worthy of the chase, it is not the subject of this brief paper on Titian's use of both classical iconography and literary sources in Ovidian and possibly Catullan narrative. Mosaics showing Bacchus returning from India are also known, such as the famous Sousse, Tunisia pavement with tigers

Additionally, while it is likely that Titian's sources were mostly from literary texts rather than from the surviving classical visual arts, this problem will be discussed later in conjunction with early 16th c. Venetian collections such as that of Cardinal Grimani, (9) in which light we should consider that: "There were probably more notable works of ancient art available to artists in Venice and other northern Italian cities in the first decades of the sixteenth century than is normally supposed" as Marilyn Perry has suggested (10) [following the trail of Otto Brendel] with her notation of the early collections of Grimani, di Martini and Isabella d'Este.

If visual referents are difficult to prove, what about classical literary influences on this painting? In his landmark collection Essays on Literature and Art, Walter Pater discussed the school of Giorgione and Titian and extrapolated that the early Renaissance transformed prior literary narrative. It was his idea that "we may trace the coming of poetry into painting by fine gradations upwards" and also that a painting of this period can be "quite independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject it accompanies". (11) That poetry here should not be limited to mere literary text is clear, nevertheless Pater distinguishes between inspired visual accompaniment and the inspiring source subject. As Lucilla Burn elaborates:

“With the rediscovery of classical antiquity in the Renaissance, the poetry of Ovid
became a major influence on the imagination of poets and artists. His were among the first classical texts to benefit from the invention of printing in the late fifteenth century; they were widely and enthusiastically translated, and remained a fundamental influence on the diffusion and perception of Greek myths through subsequent centuries. “ (12)

Hope details the Duke of Ferrara's prior interest in artists such as Bellini, especially for the illustration of familiar Ovidian narrative. In the case of Bellini, however, the Duke did not express communication in "detailed instructions" and was ignorant of the "casual attitude of Venetian artists to erudite subject matter". (13) This description of casual attitude might well fit other artists and works, such as Hope mentions in Bellini's Feast of the Gods [National Gallery, Washington], (14) but Titian's attitude is anything but casual in his depiction of Bacchus and Ariadne, particularly since the classical iconography of Bacchus [or Dionysus in the Greek tradition], more than that of Ariadne, is a complex one, with multiple attributes or recognizable traits consistently portrayed in Greek and Roman art via black and red figure vase paintings, wall paintings, sculpture and mosaics. (15)

In terms of all'antica in style, Hope also mentions that "in general, authentically classical subject matter was almost always important to patrons elsewhere in Italy" (16) Furthermore, he claims that after d'Este's experience with Bellini, Titian was provided with a specific text to follow in the case of Bacchus and Ariadne (17) which classical texts can probably be adduced, as has been often attempted. As G. H. Thompson showed, Ovid is the most likely classical literary source for Titian, with probable direct allusions to the Ars Amatoria as a primary inspiration for this painting. Thompson also related and challenged the long-held opinions of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo [Trattato dell'Arte della Pittura, Scoltura et Architettura, 1585] and Carlo Ridolfi in 1648 that Catullus Carmen LXIV was the primary source for this Titian painting. (18)

Both the story and the composition of Bacchus and Ariadne have several elements which should be explored in some detail, in historic and visual and visual terms. The Classical myth of Bacchus and Ariadne can be traced, as T. B. L. Webster (19) and others have shown, from Homer [e.g. Iliad XVIII.590 & Odyssey XI. 321] and Hesiod [Theogony 947 and Hymns to Dionysus VII & XXVI] to Hyginus [Fabulae 43] and on to Catullus [LXIV], Ovid and eventually Nonnus [Dionysiaca] in the 5th c. (20) Amedeo Maiuri has also stated that "...the desertion of Ariadne...and this theme of the lovely, hapless victim marooned on the desert island from which Dionysus rescued her, was very popular with Campanian painters", (21) following the precedent set in Classical literature as well as in the original Greek paintings of this theme. Dionysus-Bacchus is certainly well-represented in Greek and Roman art, as seen in several figures here.

First, however, we must establish the overall context in Titian's painting. The primary subjects are young Bacchus in the left center, Ariadne on the far left and the procession of Bacchus moving from right to left out of the woods on the island of Naxos, which Ovid recounts [Metamorphoses 3: 636-49] is the adopted home of Bacchus. Ariadne is half-turned toward the departed Theseus who has abandoned her on this island. The ship of Theseus may be seen on the sea at the horizon at Ariadne's left shoulder [however, if it is the ship of Theseus, where is the black sail we know from the myth?]. Ariadne is also now half-turned toward the youthful wine god leaping from his chariot, his wine-colored cape flying from his shoulders. The head of the unbearded Bacchus is also wreathed with ivy. After she played the courtesan to Theseus and betrayed her father Minos and his Cretan tyranny by helping Theseus to escape the labyrinth with his conquest of the monstrous Minotaur, Ariadne has slipped out of the saffron yellow robe, possibly the krokotos (22) of the hetaira, now placed on the ground behind her.

Having then consumed a krater of wine after removing the courtesan's yellow robe, perhaps in desolation at the perfidy of Theseus, she is now prepared to meet the wine god himself, in her unknowing readiness (enthusiasm from en + theos “in [the] god” or “god inside” or very loosely as the excitement coming from the god entering) (23) to be filled with his immediacy like one of his maenads. This sequence is demonstrated by the krater being placed on top of the krokotos, that is, Ariadne could not meet Bacchus until she had removed the shameful reminder of Theseus. The Bacchic procession [or thiasos group] includes the chariot of Bacchus, maenads or Bacchantes, dancing female attendants with cymbals, satyrs holding thyrsus and deer haunches, a satyr child [or faunus] dragging a deer head toward a pet dog, a drunken Silenus on a donkey, and an enigmatic snake-circled figure in the right center foreground often associated with Laocoon, the doomed Trojan priest of Apollo, who really has no direct part in this story of Bacchus meeting the abandoned Ariadne with his nuptial promise of the wedding gift, a crown of eight [or nine] stars overhead in the cumulus. Many of these elements will be enlarged in following sections.

As mentioned, the iconography of Bacchus or Dionysus is one of the most complex of all Greek and Roman deities, even as a relative newcomer "oriental" fertility god to Olympus.(24) There are at least ten recognizable attributes and many well-known vignettes in the corpus of Dionysian myth cycle [e.g. the "Birth of Dionysus", "Dionysus and His Maenads", Exekias' "Dionysus and the Pirates", "The Procession of Dionysus" and "Dionysus and Ariadne"] which would have been very familiar to most Greeks as well as specifically treated by such playwrights as Euripides [The Bacchae] and Aristophanes [The Frogs] since Dionysus was patron deity of dramatic tragedy and comedy. The very image of tragoedia was the death song or cry of the goat which invoked the god's presence at a dramatic festival. As mentioned [infra n.5 of this paper], Philostratus [Imagines I.15] records this iconography as already developed in antiquity. Boardman and others (25) have shown through the range of black figure, red figure and white-ground vase painting that the manifold attributes of Dionysus / Bacchus include [1] the kantharos wine cup or rhyton drinking horn; [2] a grape or ivy leaf wreath in his hair; [3] an effeminate mode of dress [most emphatic when the mature wine god is bearded]; [4] the thyrsus, his ivy wand; [5] satyrs, whose half-goat features and untamable propensity to drunkenness and lust are the natural attestations of wildness and bestiality; [6] panthers as wild companions, steeds or drawing his chariot; [7] maenads or bacchantes, women who dance ecstatically to Phrygian flutes, drums or cymbals and tear apart forest animals, usually deer, or cavort with wild cats; [8] ivy leaves and tendrils; [9] Silenus, his drunken old companion who always seems about to fall off his donkey in a stupor; [10] bearded in black figure vase scenes; and, lastly [10] serpents. T. B. L. Webster identifies core Dionysus scenes and his cult and Boardman also notes the presence of Dionysus on so many black figure scenes as probably due to "the function of so many of the vases involved". (26) These functions are connected to drinking either through the spring Anthesteria festival or its sacred marriage [Dionysus and Ariadne] as Richard Seaford, J. G. F. Hind [the wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne "was seen as a divine exemplar for mortal weddings"] and others attest, (27) or to celebrate the Great Dionysia festivals at Athens as M. Bieber has demonstrated. (28) Others have also examined the "animal vehicles" of Dionysus, including goats, serpents, ivy, fawns, etc. (29) T. B. L. Webster also distinguishes between the young, unbearded god and the older, bearded god, suggesting that it is the youthful Dionysus, as Titian shows here, who is involved with Ariadne [sometimes assaulting her] in the vase paintings of the 6th-4th c. BCE. (30)

In Titian's scene, the natural world of the painting seems to be divided diagonally between wildness and tameness. Titian has carefully coordinated the impenetrable density of woodsy greens and browns of the wild Dionysiac world through which the procession moves on the right without a given horizon. This is in contrast to the tamed landscape of cleared forest and island views with human habitations open to sky and sea on the left where Ariadne stands poised on the cliff, all planed to a visible horizon. What is more intense and exciting is that most of the stable horizon is distant to us while the woods are in the unstable foreground. Without warning, Titian places us closer to the wilder and unpredictable nature and wine god and his dangerous liberating tendencies [Dionysus Liber (31)]. It would also be remiss not to mention here examples of Titian's brilliant use of color, for which he was so famous, however faulty the perception `Michelangelo for form and Titian for colour', (32) a symbolic note as found in the garb of Ariadne. It is significant and perhaps not too programmatic that Ariadne's separate red, blue and white clothing blend to the prophetic wine color of Bacchus' robe at their meeting.

One of Titian's more inventive scenes in Bacchus and Ariadne is the confrontation between the satyr child [or faunus] and the dog. As a trophy of the wild orgiastic events in the woods where the Dionysiac rite of animal dismemberment usually take place, the satyr child drags a deer head on a string [probably belonging to the haunch of raw venison which one of the satyrs on the right is waving] whose blood and spoor the dog must have initially picked up. But now the dog - which the collar shows to be domesticated, perhaps as Ariadne's pet - having just smelled the little satyr, appears to be confused: it has nosed forward, but its upper body is slightly backing up away from its feet. Its stance seems to be asking cautiously "What is this creature [the satyr] which smells both half-humanly familiar and half-wildly unfamiliar?" As he looks outward to us, the satyr child is enjoying this joke at the dog's expense. Since there is no known classical precedent here, Titian has clearly inserted this little burlesque, perhaps for humorous effect, into the center foreground of the vignette.

Another curious element is the presence of the wild cats drawing the chariot of Bacchus, singularly noted by Panofsky. In antiquity, panthers [or leopards] are typical Dionysian steeds, e.g., the Greek mosaic at Pella with Dionysus on the panther, the Hellenistic House of the Muses [or Masks?] mosaic from Delos and the British Museum Roman Dionysus mosaic and Dionysus wall-painting fragment. (33) Although the word "leopard" [pardus, male or pardalis, female] does not appear anywhere in Ovid, Panofsky has imported a Greek quotation of Philostratus under the mention of panther, (34) where "panther" [panthera] occurs only once in Ovid: pictarumque iacent fera corpora pantherarum [Met. 3.669] in conjunction with Bacchus. As mentioned, the panther is a perfect animal for Dionysus because its name in Greek means ”all wild” pan + thera. Elsewhere in Ovid, lynxes are identified with the god in two other passages where the chariot of Bacchus is drawn by lynxes: colla lyncum [Met. 4.25], and lynxes were given by conquered India to the god: victa racemifero lyncas dedit India Baccho [Met. 15.413]. As Panofsky and others noted previously, tigers also draw the god's chariot: tigribus adiunctis aurea lora dabat in Ars Amatoria I. 550. (35) Confirming Ovidian use of tigers, or better, perhaps even deriving from the Ars Amatoria passage here in a literary borrowing from Ovid, it is specifically tigers in a Triumph of Dionysus mosaic at Sousse, Tunisia [circa 200 CE], who are shown drawing the chariot of Dionysus, where a panther is drinking [wine?] from a crater and a lion carries a baby satyr. (36) The presence of all three cats shows later Roman observational ability to distinguish them, even if Pliny earlier confused the distinction.

But the cats in Titian's painting are certainly cheetahs, as can be seen by their unique eye markings, pattern of single spots [leopards have rosettes], smaller heads, longer legs and tufted tails [Figs. 5-6]. Panofsky explains the cheetahs in two ways: oriental Bacchus has returned from India with these cats and also that Titian would have wished to "gratify his patron's interest in rare, exotic animals... [an interest] so marked in Alfonso d'Este".(37) That may be true, although pard as the overall genus of spotted cats would have also easily included cheetahs in Renaissance bestiaries, most of which were derived in part first from Pliny and later from Physiologus [3rd. c. CE]. One of the most notable contemporary bestiaries is that of the most acute observer, Leonardo da Vinci, and was written in manuscript form mostly between 1489-1517 but was accessible in the 16th c. to only a very few readers [note the excerpts from Antonio de Beatis, 1517-18, a contemporary viewer mentioned in McCurdy's 1939 edition of Leonardo's Notebooks, p. 12]. Leonardo, who also was well-versed in Ovid's Metamorphoses [note p. 37 in McCurdy], describes leopards, panthers and tigers with some interesting conflations of the three large cats in a text which owes much to Pliny by mostly direct quotation. (38)

As noted earlier, since Ovid seems to mention panther only once in the retinue of Bacchus, otherwise having mentioned lynxes and yoked tigers pulling the god's chariot, it might be that Titian could be creative and satisfy the duke's taste for the exotic in his menagerie as well. There is, however, an additional note of irony here, as some have suggested, (39) that while motion is actively shown in all the other participants in the painting, these wild cats - specifically cheetahs, so capable of incredible speed - are the calmest beings in view, when by nature they should be the most active of all cats, not to mention more active than all the other elements in the picture. Could this be an intention of Titian that, by result of the god's exciting presence, the cheetahs are calm in comparison to all the other wilder Dionysiacs?

Panofsky, in his now famous Wrightsman Lectures [Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, published in 1969 as Problems in Titian: Mostly Iconographic] clarifies that the following generations were not so lucky in identifying Titian's actual subject matter in Bacchus and Ariadne:

"The subject of the painting is so unusual even in classical, let alone postclassical, art that Annabile [sp?] Roncagli - that gentleman who recorded the paintings illegally removed from Ferrara in 1598 - could not properly identify it: he describes the painting as `a picture of square format by Titian, in which Laocoon is depicted'." (40)

While we may not agree with Panofsky about a dearth of classical depictions of this subject, the opinion of Roncagli offers some evidence of either a general lack of knowledge about textual or visual classical iconography among Renaissance writers or inversely how careful Titian was in assembling textual and or visual representations of classical iconography [or both of the above]. Panofsky also notes a plaster cast of the Vatican group of Laocoon would have been accessible to Titian after 1520 (original excavated circa 1507) and does again suggest after Lomazzo a likely Catullus quotation of Bacchic votaries "girding themselves with coiling serpents"(41)

pars sese tortis serpentibus incingebant [Carmina LXIV 257-65]

Does this explain the enigmatic man, already mentioned, in the right foreground, the mysterious satyr-like figure grappling with the serpents? Is he actually part of the procession and is his tortured expression a Bacchic feature? Do we even know that this is a Laocoon allusion, as Otto Brendel maintained? (42) The Hellenistic period Laocoon group in question was excavated circa 1507 from Nero's Domus Aurea or Golden House near the Colosseum in Rome (43) and was immediately copied in drawings by such artists as the mid-16th c. Federico Zucchari. (44) The influence of this sculpture was enormous in the Neoclassical period. The Laocoon group also served for Johann Joachim Winkelmann, the arbiter of Neoclassicism, as the model for "an artistic wonder, in which the greatest beauty is born of the greatest suffering". (45) In his Laocoon of 1776, Gottfried Lessing also delineated the domains of poetry [time-related] and sculpture [space-related], (46) which still has some bearing now in this discussion on the mutually-inspiring relationship between literature and visual arts. This is nothing new: we are often reminded of continuing inspiration between distant cultures by Keats' likely `quotation' in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" to the mid-5th c. BCE Parthenon frieze of Phidias with its "heifer lowing at the skies".

As for the Laocoon group, it appears that the Catullus line mentioned above is too specific to ignore, as Wind also stated,(47) although the Laocoon group could certainly be used in conjunction with a literary source for Titian. This would underscore the otherwise coincidental nature of two equally important sources made all the more significant by bolstering each other individually.

While visual classical sources in sculpture and other art forms and the diffusion of classical iconography appear at first to be scanty in the early 16th c., this long-held view changed after pioneering studies such as Brendel's and continues with Mattusch,(48) where architecture and the availability of classical art in Renaissance Italy came to light through contemporary accounts showing major collections in the early 16th c. in addition to Cardinal Grimani's in Venice and those of the papal courts of Julius II and Leo X. (49) Phyllis Bober, Ruth Rubinstein and Leatrice Mendelsohn, among others, have also catalogued a full array of Classical artistic sources in the early 16th c. and beyond, and has demonstrated considerable collections of Classical sculpture in Italy at this time. (50) Jane Reid has also catalogued Renaissance use of classical myths with clues that significant artistic precedents existed before Titian. (51) Besides the Laocoon group, it was becoming increasingly possible for traveling artists to have seen various Roman sculptures and mosaics, wall-paintings, monuments, etc., as well as some Roman copies of Greek sculpture. Certainly much of the burgeoning impetus for rediscovery of classicism was provided by the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the efforts of pope Nicholas V [reigning 1447-1455] to acquire Greek manuscripts for the growing Vatican Library through scholar-translators like Poggio Bracciolini whose earlier Sylloges [1430] systematized classical inscriptions. Written guidebooks also conducted pilgrims around Roman classical monuments, one of the best being the Mirabilia of Magister Gregory [14th c.], with other texts such as those of Giovanni Dondi's Iter Romanum [14th c], and the antiquities dealer Cyriacus of Ancona's Itinerary [early 15th c.] as well as the later topographic studies and collections of Julius Pomponius Laetus [circa 1470] and the work of Flavio Biondo, De Roma Instaurata [1446], which compared ancient texts with ancient remains. (52)

Where would we most encounter Ovid in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne? As mentioned, G.H. Thompson claimed Ovid is the most direct source in Ars Amatoria I. 527-64 (although a similar vignette is his Ars Amatoria I.547-62), even more so than the Catullus Carmina LXIV [50-78, 116-43 & 254-64] or Ovid's Fasti [3.459-516] and Metamorphoses [8.174-82]. Edgar Wind, of course, suggested the Fasti along with Catullus. (53) All of these passages have been much mentioned as literary sources for Titian's painting. (54)

First, acknowledging the debt to Thompson, the Ars Amatoria I. 527-64 passage can be summarized thusly. Ariadne [the Gnosian maid], after being abandoned and wandering on Naxos [Dia], has just awakened and is disconsolate about Theseus when the noisy frenzied retinue of Bacchus comes. She faints in fear at the sight, including drunken Silenus, and is then revived by the god who, after giving his reins to the tigers, promises her marriage with the crown of stars as nuptial gift. Bacchus then leaps down from his chariot to offset her fear at the tigers and bears her away, accompanied by the chanting of the holy revelers, `Euhoe!' or `Hail, Hymeneus!'. Ovid concludes " so do the bride and the god meet on the sacred couch" [line 564] :

Sic coeunt sacro nupta deusque toro.

Thus, in Ars Amatoria I. 527 & ff. we see Titian could have known this Ovidian version of the event, since these features are common to both: Ariadne's loss over Theseus on Naxos, the Bacchic procession with drunken Silenus on his donkey and great cats pulling his chariot, the leaping of the god from chariot to earth, and the crown of stars. However, there is no serpent-writhed precedent in the foreground figure in Ovid's account here.

Second, following the earlier attribution of the late 16th c. Lomazzo and mid-17th c. Ridolfi, Catullus' Carmen LXIV with its Pelian embroidery depiction can also be summarized thusly. On the shore of Naxos, the just awakened and deserted Ariadne sees Theseus sailing away, and in her mindless desolation she has let all her garments slip down. In madness, she wanders up and down the island from rugged mountains to shore again. Elsewhere on the island, youthful Bacchus also wanders, seeking Ariadne with raging satyrs and Sileni crying 'Evoe!, Evoe!', where some in the Bacchic processions wave thyrsi, toss mangled limbs of animals, gird themselves with writhing serpents, beat timbrels or clash cymbals with uplifted hands.

Thus, in Catullus' poem we see Titian could have known this version of the event, since these features are common to both: Ariadne's loss over Theseus on Naxos, the frenzied Bacchic procession with satyrs and sileni, specifically with satyrs waving thyrsi or animal limbs, the writhing serpent-girded figures, and timbrels and cymbals. However, Ariadne seems to be unclothed here and Silenus on his donkey doesn't actually appear. There is no mention of the god's chariot, Ariadne's nuptial crown of stars [although it is mentioned in Carmen LXVI], or more important, no mention even of Ariadne actually meeting the god at all in Catullus LXIV. Noted by Lomazzo, Wind and Panofsky, the serpent-girded figure looms as perhaps the most important allusion to Catullus. Girded serpents, as mentioned previously, are not accidental to Bacchic processions [or thiasoi, initiate groups in Bober's terms, op. cit.], as can be seen in the famous white-ground Brygos Cup [Munich 2647] of the maenad clutching a baby panther with a live snake girdle as her head-band (Fig. 8), as Eva Keuls states "More often Maenads are depicted with a snake coiled around one arm, in reference to the red-figure Kleophrades cup [Munich 2344], a detail referred to as "snake handling" (see image below), (55) which common feature we see on many other vases, e.g., the Attic Red-figure amphora by the Altamure painter around 470-50 BC from Capua [MS5466 - University Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] where snakes also appear on the figure's head as a snake-girdled head-band.

An additional note of interest here is the discussion of Andrew Laird regarding ekphrasis in Catullus Carmen LXIV with the poet's deliberate comparison of verbal and visual media (56) in the Bacchus and Ariadne scene as well as others imaged in the Pelian woven garment. Laird defines ekphrasis as "literary description of visual works of art" and it is particularly important here in discussing how Catullus describes a visual text with words, much like Philostratus' Imagines and in contrast to possible Ovidian sources, where words themselves can be inspiration to Roman art and also in contrast to Titian's painting here if we accept that literary texts can be sources for this painting.

Third, acknowledging Edgar Wind's attribution, Ovid's Fasti 3.459-516 can be summarized thusly. Ariadne, doubly deserted by both Theseus and Bacchus on the `desert sands' of Naxos, now rails at the faithless god who had previously rescued her while she paces the island shore. The god, returning from India to Naxos a second time, comes up behind her. He has heard her complaint and sweeps her into his arms, promising her heaven and immortality since they have already shared the bed, and changing her jeweled crown into nine stars. Thus in Fasti 3.459-516 we see Titian could have also known this other Ovidian version of the event, since these features are common to both: Ariadne's loss over Theseus on Naxos, and the god returning to her with her crown transformed into stars. However, as Thompson argued, there is no riotous retinue of Bacchus and no chariot, and while many classical accounts, including Philostratus, allow for Ariadne to be found by Bacchus as asleep, not all require it, as Ars Amatoria I [and Catullus LXIV] make clear. T. B. L. Webster in Greece and Rome XIII.1, 1966, also evidences Ariadne as both asleep and awake through literature and vases, see infra, note 19 of this paper].

As Panofsky already noted, an important argument appears in the cheetahs as evidence of the second finding of Ariadne by Bacchus after his conquest of India (57) especially with Roman sarcophagi as possible models (Fig. 9).

More telling according to Panofsky is Ovid's line Fasti 3. 508: "following her from behind" [a tergo forte secutus], where the Fasti here provide the only way "we can account for the averted posture of Ariadne".(58) Certainly there were plenty of Dionysian sarcophagi with the Indian Triumph of Bachus depicted, many of which survive today, (59) although it would be difficult to prove how many Titian might have seen, if any. As Tresidder pointed out, Raphael - from whom Alphonse d'Este had expected a painting of Bacchus and Ariadne before he died in 1520 - sent a sketch to the duke using panthers as expected in Indian triumphs of Bacchus, although Tresidder doubted that depicting an Indian triumph was a motive of Titian (Charles Hope suggests instead that it is possibly a sketch by Penni, one of Raphael's students).

Finally, in summarizing the Bacchus and Ariadne passage in Metamorphosis 8. 174 & ff., it is obviously a briefer version of the same story. Ariadne was abandoned on the island of Naxos by Theseus, and was distraught until Bacchus came and consoled her, wiping away her tears. To make her shine in heaven, Bacchus gave her a crown as she rose to heaven. Thompson argued against Wind here in that the crown was given on the first meeting with Bacchus, not the second, whereas T.B.L. Webster [in "Myth of Ariadne..., Greece and Rome, op. cit., pp. 25-6] cites variants between Hyginus and others where Ariadne received the crown upon her death or on Naxos respectively. This briefer version of Ovid [Met 8.174 & ff.] naturally lacks chariot, retinue, and much else of the extended passages, but Panofsky agrees with Thompson that the "difference between first and second encounters with Ariadne is deliberately obscured." (60) Showing that representative Roman images of Bacchus and Ariadne meeting (or other unspecific events between them) can also accommodate this variation, the Hermitage, St. Petersburg cameo is a good example (Fig. 10):

Note that it is said to be a satyr (from Slade Collection acq. 1780, Hermitage Inv. #270) between Bacchus and Ariadne on the above cameo, but it is difficult to prove this. Perhaps more interesting as a probably coincidental link to Titian is the empty wine vessel pointing to Bacchus, also suggesting Ariadne has been thus prepared to meet the god.

Panofsky also accepts all four literary texts from Catullus to Ovid as an amalgam, which is perhaps the most reasonable suggestion on Titian's literary sources. Panofsky also comments on the availability of Ovid to Titian:

“Of the more than thirty publications of this kind [Ovid's Metamorphoses] which...appeared in Titian's lifetime, no less than fifteen were printed in Venice, among them the first illustrated edition (containing an Italian translation of the original text...published in 1497.” (61)

It is also clear that Ovid mentions Ariadne or Bacchus and Ariadne together in at least 6 texts related to the activity in Titian's painting. In addition to the three Ovid texts mentioned by Wind, Thompson and Panofsky, three of these other minor texts are familiar repetitions of material used elsewhere by Ovid but are seemingly not mentioned in previous discussions, texts which briefly mention Ariadne's abandonment.

In Ars Amatoria 3.35, Ariadne is also abandoned by Theseus in a desolate place as prey to sea-birds who would pick her from the shore:

Quantum in te, Theseu, volucres Ariadna marinas
Pavit, in ignoto sola relicta loco!

and in Ars Amatoria 3.157-58, deserted Ariadne is lifted to the god's chariot to the riotous cheers of satyrs:

Talem te Bacchus Satyris clamantibus euhoe
Sustulit in currus, Gnosi relicta, suos.

Also in Fasti 5.346, Bacchus is pleased to place in heaven the crown of stars given to Ariadne:

Baccho placuisse coronam
ex Ariadneo sidere nosse potes...

In Ovid, many of the other Bacchus appearances [where Bacchus is named directly in more than 75 lines, combined with another 26 lines where he is referred to as Liber] stress the retinue of the god and his attributes and both positive and negative human responses to his liberating nature. Bacchus is clearly one of Ovid's favorites, ranking in the Metamorphoses with Apollo, Diana, Minerva, Jupiter, Juno, and Venus for popularity of appearance. For depiction of sensuality or stratagems involving madness through wine, Bacchus becomes an Ovidian agent of change and transformation in many cameo appearances as well throughout the poet's work. (62) Especially for his erotic connections and the wildness of love and maenadism (63) with or without wine's relaxation of inhibitions and purported amatory effects, Bacchus is almost as necessary as Venus and Cupid in such love manuals as the Ars Amatoria, where Ovid as praeceptor amoris or "professor of love" [I.17], often with tongue in cheek playfulness, could not avoid utilizing Bacchus for expected maximum effect.

No doubt, with such a strong Bacchus presence in Ovid, many with satyrs, sileni and bacchantes, and with multiple references to Ariadne, the Gnosian bride of Bacchus, perhaps the real point to be made here is that Titian [and perhaps equally important, the Duke Alfonso d'Este] could have been impressed in various places with the importance given to this story by Ovid [as well as Catullus] and thus have amalgamated multiple texts for the painting.

Another thought surely worth considering, perhaps reversing the perceived order of influence to some degree, is the opinion that Ovid's mythological vignettes in poetry, especially the Metamorphoses, could be the source for much Roman mythological wall-painting at Pompeii and Herculaneum [between 10 BCE and 79 CE] (64) as well as the Renaissance depictions like Titian's. This would maintain the continuity of an Ovidian encyclopaedia of mythology, its legacy assured with vignettes as distillations of mutatio and change, an "action book" for artists [past as well as future, e.g., Titian] artists looking for subject matter in brief lapidary condensations such as Ovid employed, as Bernard Andreae shows for Ulysses in the Tiberian period. (65)

Although these literary sources may have been uppermost in Titian's imaginative reworking of the famous Ovidian story and Catullan poem, there could have been other visual stimuli alongside the Laocoon group so often mentioned, as amply demonstrated in the case made long ago by Otto Brendel, with many possible sources and models of classical art in Venice:

“It is not difficult to see that Titian was familiar with classical monuments from the beginning of his career, and that he grasped their style easily...it can be regarded as certain that Titian had a lasting interest in this ancient composition...The most conspicuous fact about his borrowings from ancient art is that the freedom with which Titian employed them increased with the years.”(66)

In this vein, another possible visual Classical model can be raised. In the Ian Jenkins and Kim Sloan catalog of the British Museum 1996 exhibition Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection, there is the so-called `Mantuan' Gem [Figure 51, pp. 102-3] from 1st or 2nd c. CE Rome with its later historic period gold relief "pressing" [Figure 141, p. 238, where the photo is curiously reversed unless it is not a pressing but a copy]. The gemstone shows "a female figure, probably Ariadne, asleep on a chair. She is approached by Pan, a young satyr and - on the left - Bacchus with a torch and thyrsus, supported by Silenus." Notable is the fact that it is a young Bacchus as in Titian's painting. That this gem is very close to some of the earlier Ovidian and Philostratus accounts and equally close to some of the later Roman sarcophagi is readily apparent. Also important is that any pressing or secondary relief from the original would have Bacchus approaching from the right - just as in Titian's painting. Naturally, not all is in agreement between the `Mantuan gem' and Titian. Ariadne is asleep on the gem and awake in Titian, and yet Titian could have known the many Ovidian and Catullan quotations to Ariadne just waking from sleep and have staged his painting at this more interesting moment. There is also an inert Bacchus on the gem in contrast to Titian, which seems to better follow the literary format except that the Villa of the Mysteries [which Titian could not have seen at Pompeii] repeats a similarly inert Dionysus. Finally there is the Pan in the gem, although the so-called Laocoon and the child satyr in the foreground could both be somewhat derivable from the gemstone Pan if his attributes [animation - not ithyphallic condition, bestial face, horns and goat legs] were divided among them.

Even more remarkable, however, is the likely reattribution by Ian Jenkins to the same Grimani family of Venice whose collections others have suggested Titian studied [see Perry, infra this paper, notes 69-72]: "The subject of the gem was also engraved in the sixteenth century by Battista Franco [died 1561], in a set of engravings thought to have been commissioned as a visual inventory of the powerful Grimani family in Venice."(67) Could Titian have seen this gem or a relief of it in Venice? Brendel also supports gemstones as possible sources by claiming that not all classical models used by Renaissance artists are sculptural but can include Roman coins and engraved stones. (68) Regarding the collection of antiquities, including marbles, bronzes and gemstones assembled by Cardinal Grimani in Venice by 1523, the date of his death, Marilyn Perry states:

“There can be little question but that Titian was familiar with these pieces...
as the foremost state painter Titian would surely have been allowed to study
the state's antiquities, if he wished...Cardinal Grimani's gemstones were in Venice
at his death in 1523.“ (69)

It would of course be an argument from silence to push this little-known but probable Venetian gem as a possible source of visual reference for Titian, although in reality it is no more tenuous [nor less an argument from silence] than the well-known Laocoon group in Rome so commonly indexed in discussions of this painting.

Although the iconography of Dionysus / Bacchus is well-established in the visual arts in extant classical wall and vase painting, sculpture and mosaics, arguably mostly excavated after Titian - with the possible exceptions of a version of the Laocoon group, the sculptures noted by Bober and Rubinstein and the probable Grimani collection Bacchus and Ariadne `Mantuan' gem which seem to have all been directly available to Titian in Venice in some form - and therefore mostly argumenti ab silentibus as models, it is probable that classical literary accounts such as Ovid, Catullus and Philostratus are more logical sources for Titian to follow. In this vein, Marilyn Perry's caveat [contra Brendel?] is apropos:

“For some years, a fashionable part-time pursuit of scholars engaged in celebrating the art of Titian has been the search for works of ancient sculpture known in the Renaissance by which to demonstrate, by means of comparative photographs, how particular ancient figures may be presumed to have been adapted by the master to serve new compositional purposes in his paintings...”(70)

Perry elaborates on the problem of exact identification in the face of enormous but changing 16th c. bequests [e.g., again, the Grimani Family of Venice], mutilations by contemporary sculptors, multiple examples and a fashion for classical provenance that may tend to "denigrate the artist's [own] imagination." [ibid, p. 190]. This trend of literary and, even more distilled, virtual artistic provenance may have reached an excessive height in Otto Brendel's earlier assignations ["borrowings"] of Titian's sources to specific classical art models (71) which Perry might find too rigid and, at the same time, too limiting on the genius of Titian. However, she concludes in a somewhat more Brendelian vein, by defining the terms of Titian's possible "borrowing" into an acceptable transformation of spirit rather than imitative form:

“Poetically, and perhaps temperamentally, Titian was attuned to the art of antiquity as no other artist of his time...[and, appropriately, in descriptions of classical gemstones]... We cannot, I suspect, entirely appreciate the awe, and the delight, with which Renaissance artists discovered the monumental pagan subjects...are we not at once transported to the same Arcadia where Titian's enamored shepherd pipes to his languid nymph?... Here is a genuine "borrowing" not of form but of spirit - an excursus upon the ancient invention by which the painter, in a lyrical nostalgia of his own, captures and recreates the absorbed enchantment...” (72)

Several questions yet remain regarding the possible types of visual and textual sources for this painting. There is still the unresolved puzzle of Titian reducing Ovid's nine stars in Ariadne's crown to eight. Ovid transforms the nine gems, gemmasque novem, to nine stars: aurea per stellas nunc micat illa novem [Fasti 3.515-6] where there is no mistake about the number, however uncertain the meaning. Titian, however, loses one star along the way. On one hand, some less cautious enquiries might raise the question whether this was a concealed political allegory to which we are not privy or an embedded Neoplatonic symbolism. On the other hand, it might be safer to ask whether this suggests a literary source variant, an as yet unknown Classical visual referent or just artistic caprice.

Other questions could be raised. In accord with T. B. L. Webster's analysis of Classical scenes of Dionysus and Ariadne cited earlier, how did Titian rightly choose to portray a youthful Bacchus here in his encounter with Ariadne, which seems to be logically derivable more from visual (and Roman) than from literary depictions? Also, if one accepts that Titian's satyrs are accurate [bestial faces, horns, and especially goaty-haired legs] in iconographic detail, where else would he have been able to portray satyrs at all solely from literary accounts? (73) Without disparaging his genius, could he have managed here without clear visual referents? Given his prodigious imagination, nearly all the other Bacchic elements could have been easily derived from literature but these last two questions may corroborate Brendel's and Bober's efforts in tracing visual sources for early Renaissance art in general and specifically for Titian's painting.

Finally, as noted earlier, it must be admitted that although Greek or Hellenistic visual referents could be direct models for Titian in that they would also be pre-Ovid [circa late 1st c. BCE.], it may never be known how many of the Roman wall-paintings, sculptures, gemstones, etc., might have been inspired by Ovid rather than the other way around. As a succinct yet inventive mythologist of ideally representational images, Ovid's popularity was probably nearly comparable in the Roman era as in the Renaissance. (74)

As Angus Easson said in 1969, there is no one single source in Ovid or other author for this incredible painting. Ovid's Fasti iii explains several ideas expressed in Titian's painting: describes the leap of Bacchus from his chariot, explains the constellation of Corona at upper left, and shows Bacchus meeting Ariadne after her lamenting for some time over her abandonment by Theseus. But Easson also revived the sense of Met. VIII.169-82 as a primary source, along with Catullus and Fasti III, because it it also mentions Theseus' ship and shows Ariadne awake in meeting Bacchus. He concludes: "we might accept that the picture is a simultaneous presentation of the first and last meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne." (75)

Whether or not Titian had ample classical visual referents - perhaps the most memorable Greek one being the Kleophrades Painter (Fig. 11) above - for this magnificent painting of Bacchus and Ariadne alongside the many Ovidian and Catullus texts, it is our delight to recognize the continuity of classical images transformed in perhaps four tiers: by Titian from the Greek and Roman literary descriptions in poetry or art, including classical gemstones, sculptures and wall paintings which might in part derive from Ovid's accounts. With each iconographic transformation, we gain immeasurably through the imagination of artists such as Polygnotus, Ovid and Catullus and from Titian himself who then inspired Tintoretto and Poussin and still inspires others. Enduring myths - perhaps images of our closest ties to what is deep and eternal - have always evoked and will continue to evoke the genius of successive ages.