Arianna in Andros, una invenzione di Tiziano : in appendice testo e traduzione di Demetrio Mosco di Filostrato, Imagines I.24, I.6, I.16

Around 1515, Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) was called by Alfonso d'Este to complete his “Camerino delle pitture”: Titian found the cycle begun by Giovanni Bellini with the so-called Feast of the Gods – a painting that Titian himself retouched heavily to satisfy the client's tastes. The other three paintings in the series were inspired, in varying degrees, by the text of Imagines by Philostratus that Demetrius Mosco had recently vulgarised for Alfonso's sister, Isabella. Titian drew inspiration from the ekphrasis of ancient paintings and yet interpreted them freely, going as far as inventing, for the image that concludes the cycle The Bacchanal of the Andrians (1523-1524), the figure of sleeping maenad that had as its model a statue that just recently had entered the collection of Julius II: the Vatican Ariadne. It should be noted, however, that at the time, the sculpture was identified as Cleopatra. But Titian, with brilliant artistic intuition, sees in that Sleeping Beauty the bacchante par excellence, Dionysus’ bride: Ariadne. The essay also presents, in an Appendix, the excerpts from Imagines by Philostratus ((I.24 ΑΝΔΡΙΟΙ, I.6 ΕΡΩΤΕΣ, I.16 ΑΡΙΑΔΝΗ), which inspired the painter for the cycle: a Greek text, with Italian translation and the vulgarisation by Demetrio Mosco that Alfonso (and therefore Titian) had at his disposal.