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Lot Essay
Perhaps by the same hand as the well-known, but anonymous drawing of the antique statues of Castor and Pollux, in the past given to Poussin in Chantilly, Musée Condé (see P. Rosenberg and L.-A. Prat, Nicolas Poussin 1594-1665 Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan, 1994, II, pp. 844-5, R.268). The Crocker drawing has the same slightly heavy application of wash within the contour of the figure. An attribution to Jan de Bisschop has also been proposed.
The figure is based upon an an antique statue of the god Dionysus. It is closest in pose to the Terme type in which one arm is raised above his head, and the other is bent and holding a vessel, bunch of grapes or a thysus. A statue like one which was excavated from the sanctuary of the Liber Pater in the Acquatraversa region near Rome and is now in the Museo Nazionale in Rome might have served as the inspiration or model for the figure in the present drawing (see Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicale, Zurich, 1986, III/1, p. 436; III/2, p. 308, fig. 125).
The figure is based upon an an antique statue of the god Dionysus. It is closest in pose to the Terme type in which one arm is raised above his head, and the other is bent and holding a vessel, bunch of grapes or a thysus. A statue like one which was excavated from the sanctuary of the Liber Pater in the Acquatraversa region near Rome and is now in the Museo Nazionale in Rome might have served as the inspiration or model for the figure in the present drawing (see Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicale, Zurich, 1986, III/1, p. 436; III/2, p. 308, fig. 125).