Post Medieval Bronze Fauno Rosso Satyr

19th century A.D. Standing on a hexagonal base wearing a goatskin mantle tied by the forelegs around his shoulders, with poppy seed-heads and bunches of grapes by the left arm; in his raised right hand, a bunch of grapes and in his left hand a cudgel; stump of a tree by his right leg and barrel beside his left, with a lamb to the rear placing its foreleg on top; modelled after the so-called Fauno Rosso from Hadrian's Villa, now in the Capitoline Museum. 18.5 kg, 67 cm high (26 1/2 in.). From an important Paris gallery, France. Half-man, half-beast, satyrs were believed to be the children of goats and mountain nymphs. Followers of the god Dionysus, they had a reputation for drunkenness and spent their days participating in orgiastic rituals. They represented the crude and boisterous facets of the stereotypical male persona, particularly of rural man.