to the grape. Here the artist chose rather to introduce
the skin than the animal itself, in order to hint that sensual
indulgence in the pleasure of the grape-juice leads at last to loss of
life. With the hand of this arm he holds a bunch of grapes, which a
little satyr, crouched below him, is eating on the sly with glad and
eager gestures. The child may seem to be seven years, the Bacchus
eighteen of age." This description is comparatively correct, except
that Condivi is obviously mistaken when he supposes that
Michelangelo's young Bacchus faithfully embodies the Greek spirit. The
Greeks never forgot, in all their representations of Dionysos, that he
was a mystic and enthusiastic deity. Joyous, voluptuous, androgynous,
he yet remains the god who brought strange gifts and orgiastic rites
to men. His followers, Silenus, Bacchantes, Fauns, exhibit, in their
self-abandonment to sensual joy, the operation of his genius. The
deity descends to join their revels from his clear Olympian ether, but
he is not troubled by the fumes of intoxication. Michelangelo has
altered this conception. Bacchus, with him, is a terrestrial young
man, upon the verge of toppling over into drunkenness. The value of
the work is its realism. The attitude could not be sustained in actual
life for a moment without either the goblet spilling its liquor or the
body reeling side-ways. Not only are the eyes wavering and wanton, but
the muscles of the mouth have relaxed into a tipsy smile; and, instead
of the tiger-skin being suspended from the left arm, it has slipped
down, and is only kept from falling by the loose grasp of the
trembling hand. Nothing, again, could be less godlike than the face of
Bacchus. It is the face of a not remarkably good-looking model, and
the head is too small both for the body and the heavy crown of leaves.
As a study of incipient intoxication, when the whole person is
disturbed by drink, but human dignity has not yet yielded to a bestial
impulse, this statue proves the energy of Michelangelo's imagination.
The physical beauty of his adolescent model in the limbs and body
redeems the grossness of the motive by the inalienable charm of health
and carnal comeliness. Finally, the technical merits of the work
cannot too strongly be insisted on. The modelling of the thorax, the
exquisite roundness and fleshiness of the thighs and arms and belly,
the smooth skin-surface expressed throughout in marble, will excite
admiration in all who