Dionysus, called Narcissus

Dionysus, called Narcissus (Dioniso, così detto Narciso) is a bronze ancient Roman statuette, created between the 1st century BC. and 1st century AD e.. It was found during excavations in Pompeii in 1862. The statuette is believed to be a Roman copy of a ancient Greek original from the 4th century BC.

It was created by an artist of the school of Praxiteles. It depicts a naked, slender, thoughtful ephebe standing in a contrapposto pose with an ivy wreath on his head. A goatskin is thrown over his left shoulder, and sandals are on his feet. Initially identified as a statue of the mythical handsome Narcissus, the statuette later became attributed as an image of the god Dionysus. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, it gained great popularity and was copied many times. Among other things, the statuette attracted the attention of representatives of the homosexual subculture (Oscar Wilde, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky), and also became a source of inspiration for two ekphrasis (Vyacheslav Ivanov (1904) and Tennessee Williams (1948)).

The statuette is preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

Links

 * Jeremy Warren (2021). Statuette of Narcissus, or Bacchus. National Trust Collections