Bacchus

In the 1850’s Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert acquired a series of zinc cast statues based on originals from the antique for the gardens at Osborne House, their summer residence in the Isle of Wight. The statues were cast by the Berlin founders M. Geiss, who exhibited a bronzed zinc cast of stags in the 1851 Great Exhibition in London that were purchased by Prince Albert. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert acquired eleven zinc statues from M Geiss for Osborne House and these included Urania, Euterpe, L’Adorant, Ganymede, Venus of Capua, Meleager, Bacchus, Venus de Medici, Ceres, Medea and Venus d’Arles. This zinc full-length statue of a standing naked male youth represents Bacchus, the god of wine. He is depicted wearing a circlet of leaves and berries around his head, and holding a short pipe with his right hand and resting his left arm at shoulder height on a slender trunk entwined with vine boughs. It was presented by Prince Albert to Queen Victoria as a gift for her birthday on 24th May 1859.