Where You Stand

Is what you see. Check out these moving statues for proof.

All photos but one by the author.

Meet Young Bacchus, the bronze head of a Roman statue from the first half of the first century AD. He currently resides in the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Calif. I had the good fortune to hang out with the lad/god this week while moderating some panels at the March Capital investor conference in Santa Monica. Of which more later.

One of the things I like about this statue is the way it seems to get drunk as the viewer changes position. In the photograph above his wide eyes take in the viewer, his mouth is slightly open in wonder, and the garland rests lightly on his locks. The photo was taken while I viewed the bronze directly, bending my knees to do so. Then, I looked at him again while standing up, which put me about 3 inches above his eye line.

Whoa there, son. Looking a little muddled. His eyes have a vacancy and the lips are slack. There’s too much stuff in his hair.

This Bacchus looks a few too many cups into his evening. Somebody better call the lad a chariot before things get out of hand.¹

He’s not the only Bacchus who drinks as you change your point of view. In the Bargello Museum of Florence there’s another, said to be Michelangelo’s second professional sculpture, made when he was about 22 years old.²

Michelangelo’s Bacchus is mostly intact, and you can see how the artist plays with the god’s posture. Approached from the left side, he’s stable, cup straight on as it heads to his mouth:

Then you circle around him, and from the back there’s a decidedly lopsided gait, and the little satyr that at first was frolicking at Baccus’ foursquare leg now seems to have both legs on the ground, supporting the boss a bit:

Then you continue around to the front, where Bacchus is definitely wobbly. He looks through the handle of his now-tilted cup to drunkenly meet the viewer’s eye. Nice!

Not bad for a 22 year old no one had ever heard of.

The following year he did this:

Creative Commons.

It had a couple of angels too, but they’ve flown off.

Word is that Michelangelo, a 23-year-old nobody, overheard someone attribute his Pietà to another sculptor, a famous craftsman. That night Michelangelo returned and carved his name on Mary’s sash. He never had to sign anything again.

1. I’d be remiss not to mention the wonderful geometry of the Getty’s cases, which do such a nice job here of framing the Bacchus with thin white lines. Check out this winged lion, a Phoenician image cast by Iberian artisans in 500 BC:

It’s bigger for being so well-encased.

2. Michelangelo’s first sculpture is said to be a sleeping Cupid that he made when he was 21. He deliberately aged his product, then passed it off as a more valuable antique. Artists in those days were such bullshitters. His deception was revealed, but the cardinal who bought the Cupid was so impressed that he commissioned the Bacchus statue.