Drinking Bacchus is a Baroque-period oil painting by Italian painter Guido Reni.
The painting depicts the Roman God of Wine Bacchus as a Putto —a naked, chubby child often depicted in fine art— helping himself to a bottle of red wine while urinating.
This painting provides examples of:
- Cool Crown: Bacchus is wearing a crown made of grapes and grape vines that is at least half as thick as his own head.
- Drunken Glow: All that wine has provoked a subtle blush on Bacchus' face.
- Leaning on the Furniture: In his zeal to drink more and more wine, Bacchus has become so drunk that he has to lean on a wooden barrel behind him for support.
- Nature Tinkling: Bacchus is peeing out in the open, his urine trail mimicking the wine leaking from the barrel behind him. This makes it a "puer mingēns", a work of art that depicts prepubescent boys in the act of urinating, representing anything from whimsy and boyish innocence to erotic symbols of virility and masculine bravado.
- Putto: The painting depicts the Roman god Bacchus as a putto wearing nothing but a crown of grapes and as he drinks wine from a bottle while urinating.
- Toilet Humour: Bacchus pissing while drinking is Played for Laughs and as An Aesop for the consequences of hedonistic drinking.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Bacchus is portrayed as a toddler drinking from a bottle of wine with a disgruntled look on his face.
- Verbing Nouny: The painting's title is fashioned this way. Drinking (gerund) Bacchus (noun).
- Wine Is Classy: Very much averted here. When the god of wine himself is depicted drinking wine in such an undignified manner, the viewer isn't supposed to covet wine in the same way. Even worse, the image draws parallels between wine and urine.
