Left sculpture:
- Movement of body -> athletic sport/game/play with statue on the right?
-> no because facial expression doesn’t show concentrated look, she looks distant, far away
and in her own world
- Only nude features are feet, arms, neck, head
- Position of the feet – dancing position?
- Movement of the dress shows that she is swirling around, like a dance
- Stick over head
Middle sculpture:
- Frontal feet, bend knees
- Ball/glass/vase/cloth in her hand?
- No tension in the body, looks like she has no control over her body
Right sculpture:
- Tripping back
- Is she falling over?
- Something wrapped around her hips
- Hand pose: catching something or dancing pose, female gesture
- Feet are off ground – dancing/jumping
- Lots of movement in lower dress area
- Eyes are rolled back – drunken/high look
Whole composition:
- Women on the left and right are standing out, woman in the middle is flatter and not as dominant
- Women on the left and right are focus – they look like they fit in together in this relief, woman in the middle does’t fit in (maybe if we could see head and other arm)
- Idealisation of the woman’s body is obvious – all women have same shape of the body
- Only women displayed – which could be an indicator for a female only activity – Ancient Greece was a male dominated society so why is there no man shown in this sculpture?
à impressive for that time period
- Gesture: The normal female gesture in that time period was shy, innocent and fine, but these women’s gestures are more “raw”, they throw their arms over their heads, feet are further apart (men like pose), uncontrolled features, their facial expression aren’t lovely and serene, they are more uncontrolled, eyes rolled back (drunken/high?)
- Impression: uncontrolled/chaotic
This image shows my sketch of the outline of the women’s figures. As I got distracted by the movement in the dress I wanted a simple sketch of their body’s movement to maybe be able to indicate what they were doing. This sketch is supporting my thought that the women were dancing. Looking at this sketch the three women in this relief could only be one in different positions.
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What kind of women activity does relief show?
How do those three women relate to one another?
What is the stick above the head of the woman on the left?
What is the woman in the middle holding in her hand?
What’s around the right woman’s hips?
Why is there no man in this relief?
Why did the artist choose this composition for this relief?
Why is woman on the left on the left side of the relief – when her body is turned in the other way?
Why is woman in the middle not as dominant as women on the outside?
Who made this and in what relation did artist stand to women in sculpture?
Or is this just an idealised image of women during that time period?
After doing some research on the relief “Three Bacchantes” and the time period it was made, after looking at ancient Greek mythology some of the questions listed above can be answered even though only vaguely.
The title gives one a hint on what this relief is showing. Bacchantes is another word for Maenads (which was the original name in the Greek mythology – Bacchante is the Roman version of that myth) who were the female followers of Dionysus – who was a member of Thiasus (the god’s retinue). The translation of the name Maenad means as much as “raving ones”. The myth around the Maenads tells a story about women who followed Dionysus, about losing self control, shouting, uncontrolled sexual behaviour and hunting animals. It talks about strange rituals at night and devotement. The stick above the head of the woman on the left is called thyrsus “a long stick wrapped in ivy/vine leaves and tipped by a cluster of leaves” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maenad#Myths) – women would put these sticks in the air and dance, swirling them around, getting into some sort of ecstatic state of being.
The unidentified object around the right women’s hips might be a snake of some sort.
This quote by German philologist Walter Friedrich Otto about the play that was born out of this myth shows how feared those “mad” women were by the male dominated society. “The Bacchae of Euripides gives us the most vital picture of the wonderful circumstance in which, as Plato says in the Ion, the god-intoxicated celebrants draw milk and honey from the streams. They strike rocks with the thyrsus, and water gushes forth. They lower the thyrsus to the earth, and a spring of wine bubbles up. If they want milk, they scratch up the ground with their fingers and draw up the milky fluid. Honey trickles down from the thyrsus made of the wood of the ivy, they gird themselves with snakes and give suck to fawns and wolf cubs as if they were infants at the breast. Fire does not burn them. No weapon of iron can wound them, and the snakes harmlessly lick up the sweat from their heated cheeks. Fierce bulls fall to the ground, victims to numberless, tearing female hands, and sturdy trees are torn up by the roots with their combined efforts.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maenad#Myths).
The question if this relief was based on the myth or on the play that was born out of the myth cannot be answered. The Hellenistic relief shows the typical development that was made sculpture wise - the detail in the movement of the clothing shows the naturalistic and realistic approach to portraying movement.
Web pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maenad#Myths (Accessed 6+7 Dec 2011)
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