"Parade of the arts", by Enrique Simonet

"The dance of the maenads", roman copies of greek originals (ca. 420 a.C.).

Around 410 B.C. In Athens, which was then celebrating Dionysus with the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, a large monument decorated with reliefs of bacchantes had to be built. It was undoubtedly intended to honor the memory of some winner in dramatic contests, and its motifs had lasting success, being imitated on multiple occasions. From four of these maenad reliefs, attributed to Callimachus.

The maenads were legendary nurses of Dionysus, who protected him in his childhood and became his first followers. However, the Dionysian cult involved the conversion into maenads or bacchantes of those women who, seized by Bacchic ecstasy, danced until exhaustion at the god's festivals, waved their thyrsus, wore the nebris or fawn skin and destroyed animals, feeding on its raw meat.



📸 Prado Museum, Madrid