#thyiades

[lepetitdragonvert]

The Bacchante

c. 1853

Artist : Jean Léon Gérôme

[swordoodles]

Orgiastic dances, nymphs in trances

(We'll be the envy of the gods above)

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[ID: a digital drawing of a maenad. the background is pink-ish purple, and has darker purple dots all over it. the maenad can be seen from waist up, with light purple skin and dark purple shoulder-length curly hair. her yellow eyes are open and her dark pupils are slit-shaped like a cat's. she has one arm arm stretched forward in a way we can't see her left hand, and the other arm is folded, her right hand being seen as in front of her body and making a "come here" motion with her index finger. she has long black nails, and the hand and arm are positioned to cover her right breast, the left being visible. her purple nipple is heart-shaped for censoring reasons and she has stretch marks in the same color. the multiple black lines tracing her body are curly and irregular. END ID]

[femme-de-lettres]

Large (Wikimedia)

Lawrence Alma-Tadema painted Women of Amphissa in 1887.

Guy Hedreen wrote a full account of the anecdote from Plutarch's writings that inspired the work in an article in the Journal of the Walters Art Gallery: essentially, a group of Thyiades (priestesses of Dionysus), became lost while performing a rite and ended up in Amphissa, a town near Delphi. In lieu of a better spot, they all slept in the marketplace—where the women of the town found them in the morning. Concerned for the priestesses' safety in a time of war, the Amphissan women encircled the sleeping priestesses until they awoke—at which point the women of the town fed them, and then led them out of town.

Though the Dionysian priestesses all possess an air of self-assured languor, taking up space and making bold eye contact (even, in one case, with the viewer), the expressions of their demure proctectresses run the gamut from maternal to wary. One woman bends smilingly to talk to a cross-legged Thyiad, while another—also bending, in her case to proffer food—looks watchfully across the market.