ABSTRACT
The figure of Bacchus and his attributes play a major role in the iconography of the later Renaissance. In Italy, the Bacchic myths were variously represented and interpreted by poets, artists and thinkers from Ficino and Poliziano to Titian and Flaminio, while in France in the mid-sixteenth century they enjoyed a heyday of comparable splendour, at least in the literary domain. Amid the vast quantity of Bacchic material which was known to the sixteenth century, one image or group of images may be distinguished as a focal point, representing one of the principal areas of significance within which the myth operates. The main features of the triumph were popularized by Ovid, and to a lesser extent by Catullus and Statius; and these writers invested them with a significance which corresponds to one of the oldest and most fundamental aspects of the myth.
