This headless seated male figure is identified as Dionysos owing to the strands of long hair that fall on its shoulders. He may also originally have worn a garland of ivy. His Hellenistic style makes him a latter day version of the reclining Dionysus on the east pediment of the Parthenon.

He is called ‘Farnese’ after the Farnese collection to which he belonged — one of the most important antiquities collections in Rome. This collection has moved and today is housed in Naples