Silenus

Painted in 1867 and now in the William Morris Gallery, this depiction of Silenus — the corpulent, perpetually intoxicated satyr-like figure of Greek mythology, foster-father and companion of Dionysus — engages one of the ancient world's great comic-grotesque figures. Silenus embodied wisdom paradoxically housed in a disreputable, wine-sodden body; the Platonic tradition attributed to him certain profound utterances, while the comedic tradition relished his helpless inebriation. For Böcklin, such mythological figures provided an antidote to the elevated, moralized antiquity of academic Neoclassicism: his ancient world was populated with creatures who were earthy, sensual, and unambiguously physical. The 1867 date places this among a cluster of mythological works Böcklin produced during a particularly rich mid-career period of engagement with pagan subjects.

Depicting Silenus in oil on canvas requires the painter to render a body that is deliberately ungainly — loose, heavily built, and animated by intoxication rather than heroic energy. Böcklin's handling of such figures is characteristically direct and physical, without the polite smoothing that academic painters applied to difficult physiognomies.