A Bacchante is playing cymbals in front of a Silenus altar, his herma in a carved niche, with bacchic instruments and young satyrs dancing around.

The squaring off suggests that this composition has been transposed in painting. Such a work, with some differences, has been sold by Sotheby’s in 2003.

The painter and engraver Caresme was a pupil of Charles-Antoine Coypel. He was agréé to the Academy in 1766 and exhibited regularly at the salon and produced numerous small works in oil and watercolour depicting fauns and nymphs in pastoral Bacchic settings