Bacchus and Ariadne

About this work

You see a man in a leopard-skin robe standing on a chariot pulled by cheetahs, while a woman in a white dress looks up at him from the shore. La Farge painted this scene from an old Greek myth, but he gave it a twist: the figures look like they’re from the Italian Renaissance, not ancient Greece. He used red chalk, a material artists in Florence loved centuries ago, to make it feel like a sketch from that time. If you like this mix of old stories and Italian art, look up *sfumato*—the soft, smoky way Renaissance painters blurred edges.