Giulio Carpioni

The Italian writer and art historian, Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi, once described Carpioni’s small scale mythological etchings as "perfect conceptions, such as dreams, sacrifices, bacchanals, triumphs, dances of putti, the most attractive caprices and fantasies that a painter, inclined to work on a small scale, has ever conceived."

Much the same can be said of this delightful drawing by the artist, packed full of whimsy and movement, in which infant satyrs and putti lead a Bacchic procession, as music and debauchery envelops the scene.