Caravaggio’s BACCHUS
| Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, c.1596 Oil on canvas (95 × 85 cm) |
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Risqué Sommelier’s premier for our regular art focus had to be probably the most famous of all paintings associated with lush excess and wine…The god of exactly that.. youthful Bacchus. Bacchus and Caravaggio (1571 - 1610) had a great deal in common. They were both men of raucous character, driven by their passions, both with legendary gay trysts such as Caravaggio’s affair with Giovanni Battista and Bacchus’ with Adonis. |
| Caravaggio’s works mocked the constraints of the art world of his time… He mortalized the heroic and sacred… giving them grungy fingernails, filthy feet surrounded with rotting fruit as well as strong sensual overtones if not outright homoerotic. He utilized prostitute friends as models for sacred paintings and certainly brought the god Bacchus into a less than idealistic realm… far more mortal, one to which he could relate. Caravaggio certainly understood the realities and frailties of renaissance life as paralleled with the mythos of the Greek and Roman Pantheon. But both Caravaggio and Bacchus have had immeasurable influence on the world with their respective gifts… one with art… one with wine… Certainly our motivation for Risqué Sommelier must be that… life is too short to not luxuriate in all the finest the gods have to offer! To Bacchus! To Wine! To Life! |
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:45 am
As long as we’re on the topic of art, To Film! If you haven’t seen it, Derek Jarman’s biopic Caravaggio is very much worth a viewing.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
What a find! While we’re work-ing, wine-ing & Wedding-ing in the Temecula Valley Wine Country, on occasion we wonder if anyone’s paying attention? And then we stumble across the Risqué Sommelier! The gentleman is not only well aware of TV vintages, but his written word brings to our attention wines we way-wouldn’t have otherwise known. As well as our love of wine, Risqué appeals to our love of the English language, nurtured while English majors in college. (So last-century ago) . His turns-of-phrase inspire to the degree of the recommended wines. At the risk of repeating ourselves: go back, jack, do it again: what a find!