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Etching, 243 x 252 mm (height and width of the octagonal copper plate). Le Blanc 1.
Very fine impression printed on laid paper. Very good condition. Small tear of 25 mm formerly restored on the left edge of the large margins (sheet: 324 x 282 mm). Two small stains and a few small creases in the margins.
Collector’s mark in pen and ink in the lower margin, close to Lugt 2903b (unidentified mark, found on Italian drawings from the 15th and 16th centuries) or Lugt 3805 (unidentified mark, found on a print published in Rome in the 17th century).
The subject of this bacchanal originated in a famous silver platter engraved by Annibale Carracci (now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples), which was also used as a plate for printing several impressions, one of which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Calcografia Nazionale in Rome holds an octagonal copy of the plate, probably engraved by Luca Ciamberlano. “In 1619 Guido Reni designed a counterpart to the Drunken Silenus, however not to Annibale’s original but to the octogonal copy. This design was engraved by Giovanni Battista Costantino. It is octagonal like its prototype, shows a similar wreath and in the centre Silenus drunk, reclining on his ass with a satyr to help him keep his precarious balance.” (Otto Kurz: “Engravings on Silver by Annibale Carracci”, in The Burlington Magazine, 1955, Vol. 97, No. 630, p. 286).
