The Drunkenness of Silenus, with Four Putti and Two Young Satyrs
Gérard van Opstal (1605-1668) · 1640-1668
Silenus, the fat old companion of Bacchus, sits heavily on an overturned vase, too drunk to stand, while four putti and two little satyrs tumble around him and a goat leaps over a barrel. Everything in this narrow ivory frieze is soft, round and in motion, from the folds of Silenus's belly to the chubby limbs of the children. Look at the way the sculptor uses the creamy translucence of the ivory for flesh and cuts deeper for the shadows under the barrel and between the figures. The seated Silenus echoes a composition by Rubens that was circulated in an engraving by Van Kessel, and Van Opstal drew on it more than once.
Gérard van Opstal, a Brussels sculptor who made his career in Paris under Louis the Fourteenth, was the most admired ivory carver of his day in France. This relief may be the Drunkenness of Silenus sold at the Barre sale in Paris in eighteen sixty-three; it then belonged to the Rothschilds in Frankfurt and Paris. Adèle, Baroness Salomon de Rothschild, bequeathed it to the nation in nineteen twenty-two, and it is on deposit at the Louvre from the Musée de Cluny.
Did You Know? The tipsy Silenus is borrowed from a Rubens composition that the sculptor knew through a print.
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