Sea Centaur Carrying Off a Silenus
Unknown · Roman imperial period
A centaur of the sea, a creature with the torso of a man and the coils of a fish where the horse's hindquarters should be, wraps his arms around a drunken Silenus who rides on his back. The old companion of Dionysos, fat and bearded, clings on as the marine monster plunges forward. The centaur's left arm and leg and lower lip are missing, as are the nose, right arm, left leg and right foot of Silenus; the top of the centaur's head, his right hoof, the support and the base were remade in Rome in the eighteenth century.
Sea centaurs belong to the retinue of Poseidon and of Aphrodite, and mixing them with the Dionysiac crowd made a favourite subject for Roman fountains and baths, where water and wine could meet. The group was carved in the Roman imperial period, probably in Rome, and was found there in 1702 on the Esquiline hill. It came to the Louvre in 1899. The drill work in the hair and the deep undercutting of the coils show how the sculptor sought effects of light and shadow. Walk around it to follow the spiral of the two bodies.
Did You Know? Silenus, the tutor of Dionysos, is usually shown riding a donkey; here he has swapped it for a sea monster.
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