The Drunken Silenus

In this mythological scene, Francesco Fracanzano depicts a drunken Silenus, the chief of the satyrs and tutor to the wine god Dionysus. Instead of painting him as an elderly man, as was customary, Fracanzano here portrays him in his youth. In doing so, he stresses Silenus’s incapacitated state, his stretched skin, rosy cheeks, and oversized legs evoking the body of the infant Dionysus, who is seated at his feet on the left. Fracanzano trained in the Neapolitan studio of Jusepe de Ribera, where he adopted his master’s dramatic use of color and chiaroscuro — the strong contrast between light and dark tones — for emotional effect. His over-scaled figures and use of color echo the work of other artists of the period, including Simon Vouet, Artemesia Gentileschi, and Francesco Guarino.