Dionysus Sardanapalus

The Dionysus Sardanapalus is an uncommon Hellenistic-Roman Neo Attic sculpture-type of the god Dionysus, misnamed after the king Sardanapalus. Unlike most contemporary figurations of Dionysus as a lithe youth, the self-consciously archaising god is heavily draped, with an ivy wreath and a long archaic-style beard; probably he bore a thyrsos in a raised right hand, now missing. In the early 19th century, Ennio Quirino Visconti cogently argued, against Johann Joachim Winckelmann and other earlier antiquarians, that the "Sardanapalus" of the Museo Pio-Clementino was in fact a Dionysus.

Dionysus Sardanapalus

The Dionysus Sardanapalus is an uncommon Hellenistic-Roman Neo Attic sculpture-type of the god Dionysus, misnamed after the king Sardanapalus. Unlike most contemporary figurations of Dionysus as a lithe youth, the self-consciously archaising god is heavily draped, with an ivy wreath and a long archaic-style beard; probably he bore a thyrsos in a raised right hand, now missing. In the early 19th century, Ennio Quirino Visconti cogently argued, against Johann Joachim Winckelmann and other earlier antiquarians, that the "Sardanapalus" of the Museo Pio-Clementino was in fact a Dionysus.