# Pan Dancing with Children [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [BÖCKLIN, Arnold]() - Date: 1851-1900 - Technique: Mixed media on mahogany, 79 x 100 cm ## Commentary Following the Symbolist taste of his times, Arnold Böcklin devoted many of his paintings to subjects from Classical Antiquity. Dancing children with a faun and putti were featured in the composition The Greek Gods, a work painted for the collector Adolf Friedrich von Schack in 1869. In Pan Dancing with Children, Böcklin lends the motif a special twist by equipping the god Pan with a transverse flute instead of his more usual panpipes. The shepherds worshipped Pan as the god of the forests and fields and sought his protection for their flocks. His favourite abode was said to be on Mount Lycaeum in Arcadia, where he indulged in the love of music, dance, and good cheer for which he was famous. This wild dance by naked children with garlands of flowers in their hair would doubtless have been part of such bucolic festivities. ## Related artworks - [Attack by Pirates]() - [Campagna Landscape]() - [Castle by the Sea \(Murder in the Castle Garden\)]() - [Island of the Dead \(fifth version\)]() - [Island of the Dead \(first version\)]() - [Island of the Dead \(second version\)]() - [Island of the Dead \(third version\)]() - [Odysseus and Polyphemus]() - [Pan in the Reeds]() - [Roger and Angelica]() - [Sleeping Diana Watched by Two Fauns]() - [Summer]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()