In ancient Greece, specifically in Athens, the celebration of the Great Dionysia used to take place in the month following the spring equinox, in honour of the god Dionysus Eleuterio, also known as Bacchus by the Greeks, when men, women, slaves and even prisoners could experience liberation and freedom. La Jeunesse De Bacchus or The Youth of Bacchus, a captivating painting in oil on a large canvas, measuring 20 feet by 11 feet, was created in neoclassical style by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a French academic painter, as well as a staunch traditionalist, whose realistic genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects with a heavy emphasis on the female human body. The celebration began with the transportation of the statues of the dead and the resurrected god to the temple in a procession, which was considered a sort of divine possession, in which phallic simulacra were exhibited, accompanied by a joyful intoxication.

The procession of the assembled devotees spontaneously becomes playful, for the anticipated bliss of the afterlife, promised to the initiation of its mysteries, the Dionysian mysteries.

La Jeunesse De Bacchus depicts a scene of bacchanalia, a ritual of drinking and dancing, meant for the satisfaction of the Roman god Bacchus, by a group of naked or scantily clad men and women, together with several mythical creatures like nymphs and cherubs, satyrs and centaurs.

However, although the work is titled the Youth of Bacchus, referring to young Bacchus, the Roman god of agriculture, wine and fertility, equivalent to the Greek god Dionysus, on the canvas he is depicted as a bearded, potbellied and naked middle-aged man with a vine strategically placed across his groin and a headdress made from vine leaves. Moreover, he is ridiculously slumped on the back of an overburdened and obviously unhappy donkey. While two satyrs struggle to support his body and keep him upright on the donkey, an empty wine goblet is shown dangling from one of his hands. Despite the suggestion of the title of the painting that Bacchus would take the centre stage, he is placed away from the foreground of the scene, away from the dancing young males and dames, while the centre of the canvas is occupied by a dancing young naked female, shown lifting the hand of another naked female, lying at her feet, presumably having collapsed after much drinking.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, famous for his skilled depiction of naked female figures, was one of the most reputable and commercially successful artists in the Western world and was showered with official acclaim and prizes.

Throughout his life, Bouguereau executed 822 known finished paintings, although the whereabouts of many of his works are still unknown. For the last 135 years, the huge canvas containing La Jeunesse De Bacchus is housed in the studio of the artist in Paris and moved only thrice, to be exhibited at The Salon in Paris in 1884, in London and Antwerp through 1885 and in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1984-85.