Bacchante at Rest, called Dirce
Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850) · 1834-1855
A nude young woman reclines on her side, one arm folded under her head, her body relaxed into the ground as if sleep were only a moment away. She is a bacchante, a follower of the wine god, shown not in frenzy but at rest, and the alternative title names her Dirce, the nymph who nursed the infant Bacchus. The marble is worked to a soft, even sheen, with the joints and the small of the back modelled from life rather than from an antique formula. On the base, behind the left foot, the initials B. F. stand for Bartolini fecit.
The composition was first carved between 1824 and 1834 as a large marble for the Duke of Devonshire, and the version in front of you is a reduced replica of that work. It belonged to the count of Pourtalès-Gorgier, one of the great collectors of nineteenth-century Paris, was sold at his sale in February 1865, and later passed to the banker Furtado. The Louvre bought it on the art market in 1982, at a time when the museum was building up its holdings of Italian sculpture after Canova.
Did You Know? The first version of this figure was made for the Duke of Devonshire, and the Louvre's marble is Bartolini's own smaller replica of it.
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