Festival of the God Pan, Celebrated by the Sylvans

Claude Gillot made his reputation as a painter of bacchanals, but his original oils are lost. As in the Festival of Bacchus etching (1969.282, from the same series as this work), a woodland host pays melodic homage with panpipes and cymbals to a sculptural bust: here Bacchus’s leering, horned attendant, Pan. The poem below this ensemble praises Pan’s magical effects on the bounding goats of the fields and the protection he provides to his flock of sheep. Other reasons for celebration include Pan’s tutelage of the spirits of the wood in the musical seduction of nymphs, and his inspiration to lusty shepherds pursuing their shepherdesses.