Antique Italian Grand Tour Gouache, Dancing Bacchante, Pompeian Black Ground For Sale

She dances out of the darkness — a bacchante, follower of Bacchus, tambourine raised and white drapery swirling against a deep black ground, painted in gouache in the Pompeian-revival manner of 19th-century Rome. The convention comes straight from the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, whose dancing figures on black became the signature vocabulary of the Roman Grand Tour trade — the same bacchante-on-black formula appears in 1820s Roman micromosaics of the Raffaelli circle. Unsigned, as is typical of the decorative trade; the Roman attribution rests on the recognizable idiom. A dramatic, sensuous wall piece with real Neoclassical pedigree, in a vintage giltwood frame. Gouache on paper, 17 × 13.75 in. framed.