Men say the gods have flown;
The Golden Age is but a fading story,
And Greece was transitory:
Yet on this hill hesperian we have known
The ancient madness and the ancient glory.

Under the thyrse upholden,
We have felt the thrilling presence of the god,
And you, Bacchante, shod
With moonfire, and with moonfire all enfolden,
Have danced upon the mystery-haunted sod.

With every autumn blossom,
And with the brown and verdant leaves of vine,
We have filled your hair divine;
From the cupped hollow of your delicious bosom
We have drunk wine, Bacehante, purple wine.

About us now the night
Grows mystical with gleams and shadows cast
By moons for ever past;
And in your steps, O dancer of our delight,
Wild phantoms move, invisible and fast.

Behind, before us sweep
Maenad and Bassarid in spectral rout
With many an unheard shout;
Cithaeron looms with every festal steep
Over this hill resolved to dream and doubt.

What Power flows through us,
And makes the old delirium mount amain,
And brims each ardent vein
With passion and with rapture perilous?
Dancer, of whom our votive hearts are fain,

You are that magic urn
Wherefrom is poured the pagan gramarie;
Until, accordantly,
Within our bardic blood and spirit burn
The dreams and fevers of antiquity.

[Bacchante, a poem by Clark Ashton Smith]

Inspired by Cosmo Wenman, who recently wrote the following on Medium:

"It’s an inversion of the goal of creating access to a physical space. It’s taking a collection and projecting it outward so that people outside the museum can access the designs directly, wherever they happen to be.

What I’m advocating is not anticipating particular installations, particular uses, or particular audiences. It’s dumping the data online so that the users outside the museum can use it in ways that we could never anticipate or plan for."

A very special thanks to Sean O'Reilly and 3D Printsmith LLC for making this all possible. He used a calibrated structured light scanner combined with a motorized turntable and mapped numerous close-up shots to a macro view of the Bacchante.

Thank you all for downloading! I hope you enjoy it and look at it closely, it really rewards you with a wealth of detail the more you study it!

Stephen Chow
chowcollection.culturalspot.org

P.S. Let me know if you print this! I'd love to see the results. My e-mail is: [email protected]