Silenus and Satyr

This pairing of Silenus and a young satyr at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of Cima's rare ventures into pagan mythological subjects, painted around 1505. The corpulent Silenus, companion and tutor of Dionysus, was a popular subject in ancient art that Renaissance painters revived from classical sarcophagi and literary sources. Cima da Conegliano, active in Venice and his native Conegliano from the 1480s until around 1517, was the most accomplished Venetian follower of Giovanni Bellini in the generation before Giorgione and Titian transformed the tradition. His cool precise light, his characteristic Veneto landscape backgrounds, and his composed figure types gave his altarpieces and devotional panels a quality of contemplative clarity that served the devotional needs of the churches and private patrons throughout northeastern Italy who commissioned him. This work demonstrates the consistent quality that made him one of the most trusted religious painters in the Venetian world.

Cima renders the fleshy Silenus with surprising naturalism, using warm tonalities and soft modeling to give the mythological figure a tangible physical presence against a characteristic Venetian landscape.