Allegory of vanity

Castiglione, Giovanni Benedetto (1609-1664)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

1647-1649

Height:

98.0 cm  (38 9/16 in.)

Width:

144.0 cm  (56 11/16 in.)

Signed low right: BENED GEN CASTILIO

Technique / Medium:

oil on canvas

Place of creation:

Genova

Description

"The main figure is a bacchante or maenad, playing her attribute, the tambourine. As participants in ceremonies honoring Bacchus, maenads imbibed a powerful concoction (being poured by the figures in the scene at rear) which banished all inhibitions and brought on a temporary state of sexual frenzy. Their tambourine playing incited others to the same bacchanalian state. Castiglione's figure wears a wreath of myrtle on her head; the same plant with its delicate flowers appear at her feet. The myrtle, appropriately enough, was sacred both to Venus, the goddess of love, and Bacchus. Together the two gods produced a son - Priapus, worshiped at rear in the form of a herm statue. Across the menad's forehead runs a string of pearls, an attribute of both Venus and, at that times, women of dubious virtue. Finally the rolled-up sleeves and exposed forearms of the maenad had lascivious connotations in Renaissance portrait imagery.
From time immemorial, music had been considered an incitement to love. Thus Castiglione's maenad sets the tune for the libidinal theme at left, while at right, musicians look to her for their cue. Each of these musicians holds an instrument known for its erotic connotations. The lute played by the young man symbolized seduction and youth itself. The remaining figures but one all play wind instruments. Because antiquity linkened their form to the phallus, such instruments were considered obscene, as in the mythological contest between Apollo on the lyre and Marsyas with his reed pipe, which contrasted the nobler and baser aspects of existence." (E.W. Rowlands, 1996)

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Tambourine [2746]
Lute [3394] (under the fingerboard of the doublebass another lute is represented lying on the ground)
Cittern [3106]
Double bass [3111]
Natural trumpet [4419]
Bass shawm [4177]
End-blown flute [3940]
Hunting horn [4138]
Recorder [4039]

Image URLs

image link 1

Bibliographic references

Rowlands, Eliot Wooldridge. The collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian paintings, 1300-1800 (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996) 289-296. ISBN: 0942614259.

RIdIM record id

2915