Silenus, to the Greeks was a son of Pan or Hermes, and a companion of Dionysus. He is represented as an aged woodland deity, and had a reputation for prophecy, song, drunkenness and lechery.

The J.Chiurazzi et Fils workshop was established in Naples in 1870 and rapidly achieved success with its reproductions of Antique works of art in bronze and marble. The workshop benefited from its Neapolitan location, as it was able to copy many of the antiquities in the Naples museum. This model of Silenus appears in the company's catalogue of 1900 as no.4, Silene.