Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, commissioned a cycle of mythological paintings for the Camerino d'Alabastro, a private room in his palace that already held classical-themed decoration^[1]. The subject of Bacchus and Ariadne was originally assigned to Raphael, who took an advance payment but died in 1520 having completed only a preliminary drawing^[1]. The commission then passed to Titian, who completed the finished canvas in 1523 as part of a cycle that eventually included The Feast of the Gods, The Bacchanal of the Andrians and The Worship of Venus^[1]. Titian's first visit to Ferrara and his growing relationship with Alfonso had already led to work on Giovanni Bellini's Feast of the Gods, and the Camerino series grew directly out of that early connection with the Duke^[1].

The painting draws on the Roman poets Catullus and Ovid to show the moment Ariadne, abandoned on the island of Naxos by her lover Theseus, is discovered by Bacchus^[1]. Theseus's departing ship is visible sailing away in the distance. Bacchus arrives leading a boisterous, disorderly procession of satyrs and maenads in a chariot drawn by two cheetahs, animals likely modelled on creatures kept in the Duke's own menagerie^[1]. One figure in the retinue, wound about with snakes as part of Bacchic ritual, recalls the recently unearthed classical statue of Laocoön, evidence of Titian's close study of ancient sculpture as he worked out how to render the human body in motion^[2].

The figure of Bacchus is the painting's most audacious passage: leaping from his chariot toward Ariadne, his body and billowing drapery convey both awkwardness and brilliance at once, an expression of sudden, smitten agitation^[2]. Above Ariadne's head, the star constellation Corona Borealis appears in the sky as a bridal gift, tying the moment of discovery directly to the marriage that, in the myth, follows it^[1]. Titian divided the composition diagonally into two contrasting halves: a triangle of vivid blue sky, built from the costly pigment ultramarine, set against a riot of green and brown movement on the other side, where the Bacchic procession runs wild, one reveller collapsed in drunken stupor and another gripping the torn leg of a dismembered cow^[1].