Mantegna's profound and impassioned study of ancient art is evident from his pair of Bacchanals—one of which is illustrated here—which recall ancient relief sculpture in their friezelike compositions and stony three-dimensionality. Some of the figural motifs were adapted from two sarcophagi then in Rome, probably known to Mantegna through the intermediary of drawing books such as the one that passed through his hands in the mid-1470s.

The heroic nude who receives a crown in this engraving, his only attribute a cornucopia filled with grapes, is usually identified as Bacchus.

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