Sebastiano Mazzoni

Professor Bernard Aikema has endorsed an attribution of this dynamic depiction of Bacchus and Ariadne to Mazzoni and suggests the work is datable to his first years in Venice, where he moved in 1648.  Mazzoni's handling of figural contours and his dramatic interpretation of the mythological subject demonstrates the influence of Pietro Liberi and references works by Titian and Rubens.  This work was likely painted for the Accademia degli Incogniti, a freethinking intellectual society in Venice.