Dionysus Sardanapalus

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The Dionysus Sardanapalus from the National Roman Museum.
Dionysus Sardanapalus
Anon., 325 BC
Detail.
Detail.

The Dionysus Sardanapalus is a common Hellenistic-Roman Neo Attic sculpture-type of the god Dionysus, misnamed after the king Sardanapalus. The god is heavily draped, with an ivy wreath and a long, archaic-style beard and probably a thyrsos in a raised right hand.

[edit] Style

All Hellenistic-Roman variants are copied from a Greek original of about 325 BC. It first occurred at a time when the god's iconography was otherwise changing to a largely youthful and effeminate statue type (as seen, for example, here). The Romans elaborated the Sardanapalus type further, often showing the god with subsidiary figures. Though the type appears restrained, multiple copies of a popular relief sculpture exist with a figure of the same type, but drunk and propped up by a satyr.


[edit] Examples

Examples include:

  • British Museum Roman, about AD 40-60. In a single large block of Pentelic marble, except for the missing right arm, which was made separately and attached. It is said to have been found at Posilipo, Campania, Italy. Height: 2.2 m. Castellani Collection. GR 1878.11-6.1 (Sculpture 1606)[1]
  • National Museum of Rome
  • Vatican Museums - this was the example which was, after antiquity, inscribed across a band across its chest with CΑΡΔΑΝΑΠΑΛΛΟC(Sardanapalus), giving the type its erroneous name (it has no true association with this king). It was also restored with a modern thyrsus in wood and iron.
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