by Caravaggio, 1598
Caravaggio painted this Bacchus around 1598, showing the god of wine as a young Roman street boy. He wears vine leaves in his hair and drapes a white sheet like a toga, offering a glass of wine to the viewer. A basket of fruit, some overripe and rotting, sits on the table before him.
The earthy realism shocked contemporaries expecting idealized classical gods. Bacchus's fingernails are dirty, his complexion flushed from drink, the fruit already decaying. This isn't timeless divinity but a specific moment of mortal pleasure about to fade. The direct address invites the viewer to join the drinking.
The painting was lost for centuries, rediscovered in a Uffizi storeroom in 1913. The Uffizi now displays it as one of Caravaggio's most seductive early works.

Leonardo da Vinci
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Florence

Sandro Botticelli, 1482
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Florence

Sandro Botticelli
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Florence

Fra Angelico
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Florence
Other masterpieces from the Baroque movement

Frans Hals, 1624
Wallace Collection, London
Johannes Vermeer, 1666
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Johannes Vermeer, 1665
Mauritshuis, The Hague

El Greco, 1614
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Johannes Vermeer, 1670
Louvre, Paris, Paris

Johannes Vermeer, 1664
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Johannes Vermeer, 1663
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Diego Velázquez, 1650
National Gallery, London
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