Titian lived and worked at a time when any manifestation of the human in man were considered passions, something that was only blameworthy. The ascetic way of life was erected on a pedestal of holiness – give up everything, drink water and eat dry bread, do not look at beautiful women, pray, repent, and you will be saved. Give yourself in everything that is natural. Lock yourself in a cage of abstinence. If you do not want this, you will be condemned.
Written at such a time, “Bacchanalia” seems a strange, impossible objection to the whole established system. In it, the artist does not aim to show how disgusting a man is and how sinful his nature is; on the contrary, he uses fresh, light colors, pours the sky with whiteness and azure, creates in the spirit of antique sculptures, as if recalling Greek gods – eternally gay, eternally drunk, living and similar to man in everything.
People in the picture do not cause disgust and desire to betray them anathema. On the contrary, they are beautiful in their naturalness. They sing and drink, dance and laugh. On the hillock in the distance the old man is sunbathing. A young girl stretches, driving away drowsiness. A small boy, not paying attention to adults, cope with a small need. Fun and laughter, joy and freedom – that’s what is seen in the Bacchanalia. It is permeated with the absence of the very concept of sin. It shows that everything that is natural can not be ugly.
So, the animals are not ashamed of their nudity. So, the gods drink and pour blood, not counting this shameful and sinful.
Man is something between the beast and the god, and in Titian’s painting it is manifested in all its glory. A blissful rest, a way out of the cell of an imposed guilt by the church of guilt for everything, an instant that will be preserved in memory and will warm it even when it passes. Hymn to the moment, chanting the forgotten divinity of nature – that’s what “Bacchanalia” is.
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