The initiation of the depths
This flamboyant scene, titled Dionysus at the Rabbit Hole, transposes the god of wine and ecstasy into a twilight forest where the marvelous and the absurd converge. At the center, Dionysus appears in his full muscular monumentality, draped in a red cloth and crowned with vine leaves, holding a thyrsus, the staff surmounted by a pinecone that embodies his distinctive attribute. A symbol of vitality, fertility, and ecstasy, the thyrsus always accompanies Bacchus and his followers.
At his feet and around him, a brotherhood of anthropomorphic rabbits clad in armor seem to serve as guides and guardians. The first, pointing toward the gaping entrance of a black burrow, shamelessly displays his little backside, like a literal play on the rabbit hole. Just above, oak acorns—associated with the glans of the phallus—frame the hole and add an explicit sexual allusion. To the right, satyrs and human companions, half-laughing, half-conspiratorial, extend a torch whose flame seems destined to guide the exploration of the depths. The atmosphere oscillates between initiatory theater and parody, where baroque codes are subverted to open a narrative of passage.
In classical iconography, Dionysus was the god of transgression, of festivity, and of the blurred boundaries between reason and intoxication¹. Here, this role is extended by the presence of armed rabbits, transformed into figures of power. Their symbolism, inherited from Antiquity where they accompanied Aphrodite and Eros², affirms fertility and sexual drive. They embody a vital and sensual force that leads Dionysus toward the passage. It is this erotic energy that guides the god to the threshold of the burrow, transforming entry into the maze into a rite of desire and initiation.
The composition also draws on the imagery of Dionysian mysteries. Celebrated at night, away from the city, these rites combined dances, music, and torchlight processions, until provoking in the initiate a state of ekstasis, of “stepping outside oneself,” to commune directly with the god. They broke down the established boundaries between sexes, social classes, and roles, and opened a space of sexual freedom where homosexuality found a ritualized and acknowledged place³. In this painting, the descent into the burrow echoes these nocturnal passages: it condenses into image the dissolution of norms and the promise of another world, sensual and egalitarian.
A modern reading of the work draws on the very term rabbit hole. Popularized by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), it evokes the fall into an unpredictable world without apparent end. In the digital age, and especially on the Internet, the expression describes the familiar experience of one search leading to another, one subject linking to a second, then a third, until creating a spiral of exploration where time itself is lost. Viewed this way, the painting transposes Dionysian intoxication into a contemporary metaphor: the burrow becomes the image of an infinite plunge into layers of knowledge, desire, or distraction, where each détour reveals a new horizon to explore.
Beneath its playful surface, Dionysus at the Rabbit Hole thus stands as a reflection on the desire to cross imposed thresholds—between heroic masculinity and animality, between religious solemnity and carnivalesque play, between the visible world and the depths of the imagination⁴. It is precisely this blend of irony and gravity that makes it an image of queer rite: the crossing of prohibitions and the invention of another space, where intimacy and myth converge in the trembling light of a baroque clearing.
Notes
1. Walter Otto, Dionysos: Myth and Cult, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965.
2. Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book IX, 31, 4; see also H. Leclercq, “Lapin,” Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1913.
3. Euripides, The Bacchae; Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, Harvard University Press, 1987.
4. Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, New York: Pantheon, 1991.
Dionysus at the Rabbit Hole
Attributed to the workshop of William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905)
Oil on canvas, circa 1884
Possibly linked to a state commission, before disappearing from known archives.
Close to Bouguereau’s La Jeunesse de Bacchus (1884), this work combines academic aesthetics with a more fanciful allegorical vein.
The Vitruvian Man
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
Ink and wash on paper, c. 1490
Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice
This drawing, one of the most famous of the Renaissance, illustrates the ideal proportions of the human body as described by the Roman architect Vitruvius: the man inscribed in a circle and a square embodies the harmony between microcosm and macrocosm, between body and universe. Leonardo combines scientific observation with aesthetic pursuit, translating into image the humanist ideal of a rational and universal body.
Beyond its theoretical function, the work also reveals Leonardo’s passionate attention to the male body, which he studied with a gaze at once scientific and sensitive. His numerous anatomical drawings and notebooks disclose a particular fascination for virile beauty. Contemporary testimonies, sometimes critical, recall his attraction to young men and his homosexuality, lived in a society where it remained half-clandestine.
Thus, The Vitruvian Man can be read not only as a manifesto of Renaissance science, but also as the intimate affirmation of a desire: to raise the male body to the rank of the ideal measure of all things.
Torso of Meleager
Roman copy after Polyclitus (Greek original circa 440 BCE)
Marble, height approx. 1.50 m
Pio-Clementino Museum, Vatican Museums, Rome, Italy (similar examples preserved in the Louvre, Naples, and various European museums)
This statue of Meleager, a Greek mythological hero, is a Roman copy of an original by Polyclitus. The torso illustrates the ideal of masculine beauty in antiquity, with perfect proportions and harmonious musculature, characteristic of the classical style. Meleager, a young hero whose exploits were celebrated, embodies not only virility but also the idealization of emotional bonds between men in Greek culture.
The relationship between Meleager and his companions in the Calydonian boar hunt could be interpreted as expressions of shared intimacy and desire. In a world where relationships between young men and adults were often valued, as evidenced by the practices of ephebes or athletes in the palaces and gymnasiums, intimate friendships sometimes served as a space for erotic exploration. These bonds, often based on education and physical camaraderie, were also seen in Dionysian cults, where initiatory rituals included emotional and sensual relationships among participants.
This sculpture reflects how both Greek and Roman antiquity celebrated beauty, virility, and male eroticism, while also allowing for the portrayal of homoerotic relationships in social and artistic contexts, recognizing them as a natural component of social life and the visual culture of the time.
Attic Red-Figure Cup: Zeus and Ganymede
Attributed to the Berlin Painter (c. 500–490 BCE)
Attic red-figure ceramic
Archaeological Museum (similar examples in the Louvre, Berlin, and several European collections)
This cup illustrates one of the most explicit tales of Greek homoeroticism: the abduction of Ganymede, the young Trojan prince, by Zeus. The bearded god, crowned with laurel, draws toward him the handsome youth, shown nude, with curly hair and adorned with the attributes a young man in his prime.
In mythology, Ganymede became Zeus’s divine lover and cupbearer on Olympus. This scene consecrated in the Greek imagination the legitimacy of initiatory relationships—that is, the erotic and educational bond between an adult and a younger man—considered at the time to be a noble and formative form of love.
The use of such cups in the context of the symposion (male banquet) reinforced this dimension: they staged and celebrated attraction to male beauty while offering the guests images that legitimized and exalted homoerotic bonds.