Fountain with Silenus in the Garden of the Cesi Palace near Rome

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

A pupil of Cornelis Cort, Pieter Perret traveled to Rome in the 1580s, where he engraved this view of the garden of the Cesi Palace. The curious fountain depicted here has as a base the celebrated neo-Attic Torlonia Vase, which is still preserved in Rome. An ancient statue of Silenus, one of the god Bacchus’s inebriated followers, was added to the vase after 1550; thus Perret’s print documents a case of a hybrid artwork made from ancient sculpture and adapted to suit Renaissance tastes. Silenus holds a wineskin, gruesomely interpreted by Perret as a decapitated torso of a woman, through which water is poured into the basin below.

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