Infant Bacchanal

Trompe l'oeil paintings by Sauvage and from his workshop often were loosely based on classical friezes or contemporary sculptures. In this case the design was inspired by a Clodion relief (Musée du Louvre, Paris) for the courtyard of the Hôtel de Bourbon-Condé, which was built between the summer of 1780 and the first months of 1782. A terracotta model for the Clodion relief is in this Museum (59.87.1). Infant Bacchanal was an overdoor, painted to imitate bronze and depicting putti at play in Bacchic revels. Symbols of the Roman god Bacchus abound: a putto carries grapes, a satyr pulls them from an overturned amphora, and other putti wear wreaths of grape leaves. The figure seated on the back of the goat holds Bacchus's thyrsus and must be the god himself.

Katharine Baetjer and Francesca Whitlum-Cooper 2010

[Georges Hoentschel, Paris, until 1906; sold to Morgan]; J. Pierpont Morgan, New York (1906)

Katharine Baetjer. French Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Early Eighteenth Century through the Revolution. New York, 2019, pp. 303–4, no. 103, ill. (color).

Kee Il Choi, Jr. "From 'Lieux' to 'Meubles': Chinese Woodblock Prints and French Marquetry of the 1770s." Furniture History 58 (2022), p. 155 n. 45.