The Triumph of Silenus

Born and trained in Antwerp at the height of Peter Paul Rubens’s influence, Gerard van Opstal settled in Paris, where he contributed to the decoration of important private residences and royal projects like the Louvre. Adapting Rubens’s heroic figures and penchant for mythological themes to a smaller scale for private collectors, he excelled at carving delicate, playful reliefs showing the followers of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, in marble and in ivory. Here, Silenus, the portly and permanently drunk companion of Bacchus, is the center of a noisy procession in which lively children imitate the behavior of their elders.