Italian school of the XVII-XVIII century, following models of Classical Antiquity. "Dionysus with animal". Marble. Measurements: 125 x 48 x 48 cm. We are in front of a sculpture that has its roots in classical statuary, more specifically in the model "Dionysus with panther" from the time of the emperor Hadrian. The sculpture, of which the Museo del Prado houses a copy, combines stylistic elements of the early classical period (490-470 BC) with others from the late fourth century BC. As in the one in the Spanish gallery, our sculpture lacks the thyrsus, held as a spear in the left hand, the head with its long hair pulled back and crowned with ivy, and the pitcher of wine that Dionysus held in his right hand. The Romans brought two important novelties to the world of sculpture: the portrait and the historical relief, neither of which existed in the Greek world. However, they followed Greek models for much of their sculptural production, a base that in Rome would be combined with the Etruscan tradition. After the first contacts with the Greece of classicism through the colonies of Magna Graecia, the Romans conquered Syracuse in 212 BC, a rich and important Greek colony located in Sicily, adorned with a large number of Hellenistic works. The city was sacked and its artistic treasures taken to Rome, where the new style of these works soon replaced the Etruscan-Roman tradition that had prevailed until then. Shortly afterwards, in 133 B.C., the Empire inherited the kingdom of Pergamon, where there was an original and thriving school of Hellenistic sculpture. The huge Pergamon Altar, the "Gallus committing suicide" or the dramatic group "Laocoön and his sons" were three of the key creations of this Hellenistic school. On the other hand, after Greece was conquered in 146 B.C. most Greek artists settled in Rome, and many of them devoted themselves to making copies of Greek sculptures, very fashionable at that time in the capital of the Empire. Thus, numerous copies of Praxiteles, Lysippus and classical works of the 5th century B.C. were produced, giving rise to the Neo-Attic school of Rome, the first neoclassical movement in the History of Art. However, between the end of the 2nd century BC and the beginning of the 1st century BC there was a change in this purist Greek trend, which culminated in the creation of a national school of sculpture in Rome, from which emerged works such as the Altar of Aenobarbus, which already introduced a typically Roman narrative concept, which would become a chronicle of daily life and, at the same time, of the success of its political model. This school will be the precursor of the great imperial art of Augustus, in whose mandate Rome became the most influential city of the Empire and also the new center of Hellenistic culture, as Pergamon and Alexandria had been before, attracting a large number of Greek artists and craftsmen. In the Augustan era Rome contributed to the continuity and renewal of a tradition that already had a centuries-old prestige, and which had dictated the character of all the art of the area.