A description of Comus as he appeared in painting is found in
Imagines (
Greek Εἰκόνες,
translit. Eikones) by
Philostratus the Elder, a Greek writer and sophist of the 3rd century AD. Dionysos sails to the revels of [the island of] Andros and, his ship now moored in the harbour, he leads a mixed throng of Satyroi (Satyrs) and Bakkhantes (Bacchantes) and all the Seilenoi (Silens). He leads Gelos (Laughter) and Komos (Comus, Revelry), two spirits most gay and most fond of the drinking-bout, that with the greatest delight he may reap the river's harvest. In
Renaissance times, an
allegorical painting of the
Reign of Comus was begun by
Mantegna for the
Studiolo of Isabella d'Este and was completed by
Lorenzo Costa in 1511/12. This pictured Comus as the ruler of a land of
bacchanals, seated on the left in the company of
Venus and
Cupid, beside an inlet of the sea.
John Milton's later masque of
Comus (1634) invents a new genealogy for the god, describing him as the son of
Bacchus and
Circe. A licentious figure here, as suggested in Costa's allegory too, his attempts to seduce a virtuous lady whom he has kidnapped are only narrowly defeated by her brothers. There have been a number of paintings of episodes from the play, including a set of eight
watercolours commissioned from
William Blake in 1801;
Samuel Palmer's
The Dell of Comus (1855, now in the Brighton Museum); and
Edwin Landseer's
The Defeat of Comus, originally painted in 1843 for the garden pavilion in the grounds of
Buckingham Palace. As a dramatic character, Comus also appears at the start of
Ben Jonson's
masque Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618) and in
Les fêtes de Paphos (
The Festivals of Paphos, 1758), an opéra-ballet by
Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville. In addition, he features in the
baroque operas
Les plaisirs de Versailles (1682) by
Marc-Antoine Charpentier and
King Arthur (1691) by
Henry Purcell and
John Dryden. During the 18th century a Temple of Comus was built as a venue in the
Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, where it was depicted by
Canaletto during his visit to London and later made the subject of a popular print. ==References==