ABSTRACT
If you look at the picture (see Figure 18.1) you can see, on the right hand side, Priapus lifting the garments of the sleeping Lotis gently with the intention of ravishing her. At the other side of the picture are Silenus and the ass, whose braying prevented Priapus’s trick. In between them is a series of gods and nymphs seated in a row or standing behind, including Mercury with his caduceus and Neptune and the earth goddess seated together in the manner of partners, with the goddess holding a quince which signified maternity. The Feast of the Gods was based on a passage in Ovid’s Fasti (I, 415440). The essence of the story is Priapus’s attempt to rape the sleeping Lotis, prevented by the braying of Silenus’s ass. Bellini appears to have filled up the picture with a rather absurd collection of ancient gods, jeered at by the satire of their standard implements. But in spite of this it remains essentially Ovid’s story of Priapus, traditionally endowed with a huge penis, attempting to rape Lotis but interrupted by Silenus’s ass. Of course it is beautifully and naturalistically painted with the most modern skill, available at that moment only to the foremost Venetian painters. But I would like to emphasize that at the same time it is essentially a joke picture, a row of ancient gods with silly
Fig. 18.1 Giovanni Bellini, Feast of the Gods, National Gallery, Washington.
