Bacchus
100 × 70 cm — Oil on canvas
Bacchus marks the origin of the classical practice. Conceived in dialogue with Caravaggio's painting of the same subject, the work reinterprets it at its foundation: not the god of wine, but a goddess — rendered as a self-portrait. Its execution required sustained research into the methods of the Renaissance and Baroque masters: compositional structure, the chemical behaviour of oil paints and mediums, and the glazing technique through which light passes down through a painting's layers to its first ground. The discipline established here underlies every work that followed.