Bacchus from the Balkans

Only the head and torso survive from this under life-size statue of Dionysos, known to the Romans as Bacchus. The god’s luxurious hair is fastened with a band, several stray locks trailing over his shoulders. Ivy tendrils with leaves and fruit identify the god of wine, as does his soft physique. This statue type was quite popular for the god; one life-size copy was found in the Tiber River and now stands in the Roman National Museum. Statues of Bacchus were prized as decoration for Roman villas: in this context they connoted otium, the leisure time enjoyed by the Roman upper-class, which was often spent with friends over a shared meal and good conversation.
Bronze statues were valued in antiquity, among other reasons, because they produced a more naturalistic effect than marble statues. Artists leveraged the different colours of various metals to this end: thus Bacchus’ hairband is inlaid with pure copper, as are his lips and nipples. Using this technique, the artist imbued the god with remarkable liveliness. Literary sources even mention a bronzeworker who mixed silver with bronze to attain a pale skin tone. The splendour of bronze statues was heightened by their perfectly smooth surfaces. These could only be obtained by covering dozens of small pores and flaws with tiny squares of metal which had to be cast from the same material as the statue in order to match its colour. This work would have been laborious and time-consuming. It was carried out on this Bacchus statue as well, and is easy to see today because the statue was subject to stress that caused the metal patches to pop out of place. The statue’s find spot in Dalmatia attests that the standards of a luxurious lifestyle were widely disseminated throughout the Roman Empire.