Pair of prints with bacchanal scenes

RAYMOND LAFAGE (1656-1690) (drawing);

FRANZ ERTINGER (1640-1710) (engraving);

JEAN VANDER BRUGGEN (1649–c.1699) (editor);

Paris, ca. 1683.

Laid paper with “P Y G” watermark.

Variable footprints.

Good condition. Full margins.

The bacchanals were festivals consecrated to Bacchus, god of wine and “divine madness.” Progressively, this agricultural divinity was progressively linked to the demigod Pan, and to a procession of nymphs who served him, known as the maenads.

It is not surprising that the cult of the god, known as the bacchanals, had a character of orgiastic drunkenness, nor that, in imitation of the maenads, the officiants of the cult were exclusively women, known as the bacchantes. The bacchanals were, after all, a representation of the courtship of the lubricious god of wine.