CIRCA 1ST CENTURY A.D.

Depicted here are Bacchus and Ariadne (or, alternatively, a maenad), both standing on a groundline, the god with his arm resting on her shoulders. Bacchus is shown frontally, with one leg in front of the other, nude but for a mantle over his shoulders, holding a beribboned thyrsus in his lowered hand. His consort is also depicted frontally but for her head, which is turned in profile towards Bacchus. She is nude but for a mantle that envelopes her waist and legs. One hand is raised to her chignon, the other is not visible but extending behind Bacchus’ back. The ringstone is mounted as a ring in a 19th century gold setting.
The subject was popular in Greek and Roman art in every medium. The pair are similarly depicted on a Roman fresco now in Malibu (p. 222 in K. Lapatin and K.B. White, eds., The J. Paul Getty Museum, Handbook of the Antiquities Collection) and the pose is close to that of a marble group once at Marbury Hall, now in Boston, where the male has been restored as Bacchus but was most likely originally Priapos (no. 196 in M. Comstock and C.C. Vermeule, Sculpture in Stone). It is surprisingly rare on gems, but see the cast of a now-lost glass cameo, no. 477 in J. Boardman, et al., The Marlborough Gems; and on a glass gem in Munich, where the pair stand under a pergola of grape vines (no. 194 in C. Gasparri, “Dionysos/Bacchus,” in LIMC, vol. III).