Thank Bacchus it’s Friday!
Reach out and touch fur! Your own purrrsonal Bacchus, Someone to eat your shrimpies, Someone who cares, Someone to sniff your catnip, Someone who’s there:
Peter Paul Rubens, Purrsonal Bacchus
Created in the last years of Rubens’ life, this painting amazes the viewer with its virtuosity of style and unusual interpretation of the image of the god of wine and merriment. Bacchus is depicted as a grossly obese Cat, whose belly was significantly enhanced in comparison with the model, according to the will of the artist, surrounded by a satyr, a maenad, and putti. The rich palette, in which all the colors blend into one golden stream, and the natural, sketchy technique, enabled the artist to create a genuine sense of debauchery, or bacchanalia. This is a paean to cat flesh. According to Rubens’ nephew, Philip, this was not a commissioned work, and the artist kept it in his studio till the end of his life. The painting was inherited by his nephew after the death of the artist. Poor guy, being afraid of the well-known art critics’ reaction, asked some disciple of Rubens to paint a man over the cat. The result is also well known:
Peter Paul Rubens, Bacchus, from the Hermitage Museum collection
You see, the result is not so cute, is it?
Flesh and bone
You are not a cat at all,
Open your fridge
And I’ll throw a fur ball
Take second best
Put me to the test
Take a cat on your chest
You need to confess
I will deliver,
Just gimme a piece of chicken liver
Reach out and touch my fur!
and
BUY THIS ARTWORK as a CANVAS PRINT or as a POSTER
Thus speaks Zarathustra the Cat
