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Dionysus, called Narcissus

Bronze Roman statuette

Dionysus, called Narcissus
Artist	Praxiteles (?)
Year	1st century BC. - 1st century AD.
Medium	Bronze sculpture
Dimensions	63 cm (25 in)

Dionysus, called Narcissus (Italian: Dioniso, così detto Narciso) is a bronze ancient Roman statuette, created between the 1st century BC. and 1st century AD e.. It was found during excavations in Pompeii in 1862. The statuette is believed to be a Roman copy of a ancient Greek original from the 4th century BC.^[1]

It was created by an artist of the school of Praxiteles. It depicts a naked, slender, thoughtful ephebe standing in a contrapposto pose with an ivy wreath on his head. A goatskin is thrown over his left shoulder, and sandals are on his feet. Initially identified as a statue of the mythical handsome Narcissus, the statuette later became attributed as an image of the god Dionysus. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, it gained great popularity and was copied many times. Among other things, the statuette attracted the attention of representatives of the homosexual subculture (Oscar Wilde, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky), and also became a source of inspiration for two ekphrasis (Vyacheslav Ivanov (1904) and Tennessee Williams (1948)).^[1]

The statuette is preserved in the National Archaeological MuseumofNaples.^[1]

• Dwyer, E. (1982). Pompeian Domestic Sculpture: A Study of Five Pompeian Houses and Their Contents. Rome: G. Bretschneider. pp. 53–54, 108, 123, 135.
• Kennedy, Allison R. (2004). "Dionysiac sculpture at Pompeii". Domestic statuary at Pompeii: the sculptural repertoires of Venus, Hercules, and Dionysus (thesis). Hamilton, Ontario: McMaster University. pp. 65–70 – via Professor M. George.
• Kuivalainen, Ilkka (2021). The Portrayal of Pompeian Bacchus. Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 140. Vaasa: The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. pp. 219–220. ISBN 978-951-653-463-6.
• Francis Haskell, Nicholas Penny. (1981). "The Narcissus". Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900. New Haven; London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300029130.
• McDonough, Christopher. (September 2011). "Property of Tennessee Williams. What a souvenir statue tells us about his writing". Humanities. 32 (5). Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Humanities. ISSN 0018-7526.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Грякалова Н. Ю.. (2018). "Нарцисс versus Дионис: вкруг стихотворения Вяч. Иванова «Нарцисс. Помпейская бронза» // Визуальный артефакт, литературная топика и перспективы интертекстуального анализа". Интертекстуальный анализ: принципы и границы: сборник научных статей. СПб: СПбГУ. pp. 132–141. ISBN 978-5-288-05780-9 – via под ред. А. А. Карпова, А. Д. Степанова.
• Грякалова, Н. Ю. (2016). "От экфрасиса к интертексту (Вокруг стихотворения Вяч. Иванова "Нарцисс. Помпейская бронза")". old.pushkinskijdom.ru (in Russian) (Русская литература ed.). pp. 114–123.

Media related to Dionysus, called Narcissus, from Pompeii at Wikimedia Commons

• Jeremy Warren (2021). Statuette of Narcissus, or Bacchus. National Trust Collections