Provenance
Matthiesen Fine Art, 1987
Sotheby’s, Selected renaissance and mannerist works of art assembled by Fabrizio Moretti, New York, 25 January 2015, lot 137
Private collection

Literature
Calendar in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXIX no. 1009, Aprile 1987, p. 280
M. Privitera, Girolamo Macchietti. Un pittore dello Studiolo di Francesco I, Milano, 1996, pp. 96 - 97, no. 8.

The painting depicts a passage from the Images (Ε�°κόνες) of Philostratus (I, 25) in which the author describes the characters on the Greek island of Andros, crossed by a river of wine created by Dionysus. The artist portrays Philostratus' verses in a broad and faithful interpretation with, on the left-hand side, the personification of the river of wine flowing from left to right, depicted as a superhuman giant with a long white beard, lying on bunches of grapes below the barrel whose upper hole has a lion's head and surrounded by young tritons filling their shells at the spring where the wine gushes out to be drunk. In the background is the ship of Dionysus, which, according to Philostratus, carried bacchae, satyrs, libation demons and Silenes, a satyr, half-naked bacchae and tritons; all shown in varying degrees of intoxication as they lie, dance, sing or drink. The entire scene is enveloped in a bright light characteristic of the hour of sunset, a prelude to the intemperance of the night.

In 1996, Marta Privitera[1] published the present work, attributing it to Girolamo Macchietti within the artist's biography, an attribution later confirmed by Carlo Falciani, who described this painting as the artist's absolute masterpiece. Macchietti trained in Florence under Vasari, working on the renovation of Palazzo Vecchio in the 1650s, and then moved to Rome before returning to Florence and becoming a member of the Accademia del Disegno. The Bacchanal of the Andrii - a preparatory sketch of which is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford[2] - is undoubtedly the result of the artist's elaborate study of classical sculptural forms while in Rome. Indeed, every figure depicted appears to be directly derived from existing models from classical sculpture; the denuded female figure in the foreground is most likely inspired by Ariadne Sleeping in the Belvedere in the Vatican City. Similarly, the tritons are easily connected to the figures at the base of the same sculpture. In turn, the dancing figures on the banks seem to be based on models of theApollo of the Belvedere or Diana the Huntress now in the Louvre.
Comparisons with other works by the artist may further confirm this attribution. Examples include theAllegory of Liberality (ca. 1565) in the Ca' d'Oro Museum in Venice, in which Prosperina is depicted with a linearity and definition of form comparable to the figures here. Further similarities are found in the Madonna and Child with St. Anne (ca. 1570) in the Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest, which shows a comparable landscape in the background, making an acquaintance with Roman and Northern European paintings plausible. The crowded composition, built on different planes, is somewhat reminiscent of the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (1573) in the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

The work thus shows the influence of Vasari's elaborate mannerist style; Macchietti mastered Vasari's sophisticated compositional tension with great skill. The paintings examined here also show an in-depth study of the creation of highly naturalistic forms and figures, a quality probably induced by Macchietti's stay in Rome. The influence of Parmigianino, including the depiction of extremely elegant figures with a certain air of disdain, is also evident; the female figure in the foreground is an obvious example. The link with Raphael's own style and Macchietti's profound adherence to the brilliant figurative manner of the post-Raphaelite Roman milieu is also significant.
The size, subject matter and unparalleled quality of the present painting would suggest that it was created for an important patron. Macchietti's masterpiece was most likely created around the mid-1560s, after the artist's return from Rome and before the realisation of theAdoration of the Magi (1567-1568) in the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence.