Satyrs Dancing from Bacchanales, or Satyrs' Games

Satyrs Dancing from Bacchanales, or Satyrs' Games — Jean-Honoré Fragonard. 1763.

Medium: Etching on ivory laid paper. Dimensions: Image: 13.2 × 20.3 cm (5 1/4 × 8 in.); Plate: 14.3 × 20.9 cm (5 11/16 × 8 1/4 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

Fragonard may have copied the relief within his Satyrs Dancing from an ancient bacchic sarcophagus. The swaying nymph holds a noise-making rattle, and the artist implies that, however improbably, this sculptural figure has deposited her pinecone-topped thyrsos outside the frame. It leans at a jaunty angle in the bacchic vessel at left, which is decorated with a smirking face and grapevine crown. The thyrsos was one of the wine god Dionysos’s main attributes. These figures could well all be part of the bacchic entourage, including the nymph’s satyr spouse and three children.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.