An ancient Tarantine Greek limestone relief depicting four maenads in an ecstatic state wearing chitons and billowing himations and holding thyrsoi, one holds a stag they have surrounded by the antlers as they are about to cut it down with swords.
Ca. 300 – 280 BC.
Maenads (also Bacchantes) were the frenzied female members of the retinue of Dionysos, the Greek god of wine and revelry (Roman: Bacchus). Maenads, literally “the raving ones,” were often depicted in Greek art as wild and ecstatic women who indulged in sex, violence, and intoxication.
cf.: J. C. Carter, “The Sculpture of Taras,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 65, part 7,(1975), p.94, pl. 60c.
Formerly in an English private collection; subsequently with Royal-Athena Galleries, New York, acquired in 2000; subsequently in a New York private collection.
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