How To Read Paintings: Caravaggio’s Bacchus

A Baroque masterpiece about decadence and decay

Christopher P Jones is the author of How to Read Paintings, an introduction to some of the most fascinating artworks in art history.

Detail of ‘Bacchus’ (c.1596) by Caravaggio. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. Source Wiki Art (public domain)

Caravaggio’s painting of Bacchus contains all the revelry associated with the mythological libertine bubbling beneath its surface. It is this sense of…