Bacchus and Ariadne

Bacchus leaps from his cheetah-drawn chariot toward Ariadne, abandoned on Naxos by Theseus, whose ship slips away on the horizon; above her hangs the crown of stars that foretells her immortality, while the god's rowdy train of satyrs and maenads crashes through the landscape. Titian painted it in 1520-23 for Alfonso d'Este's alabaster chamber in Ferrara, part of a cycle of bacchanals for the duke. Its ultramarine sky and headlong motion made it a touchstone of Venetian color for centuries; it hangs in the National Gallery, London.