Dore's Maenads in a Wood

Okay, yesterday I mentioned this bas-relief when I was talking about the painting of Summer. Housed in the same museum (MFA Boston) this is tucked neatly in a hall surrounded by a glass case. Right across the hall from a bust of Dante and Virgil.

Maenads are the worshippers of Dionysus (Bacchus) and their name literally means "the raving ones". Given their ecstatic frenzy from dancing and drinking. they are said to lose all self control and engage in wild sex and hunt down animals and men to tear apart with their bare hands and devour raw.

Me thinks this might be a *smiiiiidge* exaggerated. Possibly.

I could get into the sexual politics of vilifying women who behave against societal codes of submissiveness, but that is for another blog. Back to the art.

Hey, this pic is almost good! Yay me!

This sculpture feature deliciously fleshy nubile young women on a very dangerous precipice. Even though the title says "in a wood", it seems they have come to the end of the wood and are now looking over a cliff. Metaphor for the problems of such worship perhaps? Dore seems to have a fondness of masses of flesh piled on top of each other. Here the maenads, still in ecstatic state, dance and crawl around the central figure the only solid and sober seeming figure of the group. All are blissfully unaware of the danger before them.

The majority of the piece is actually plain "rock" only the upper portion is the figures themselves. Perhaps Dore meant for the piece to be seen from much further below than the museum has it to emphasis the dangerous pursuit of pleasure of the drunken followers of Dionysus.