The Infant Bacchus or Young Bacchus is a ca. 1505–1510 painting of the Roman god Bacchus as a boy by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini. Originally painted on panel, it was later transferred to canvas.[1]
It was probably the Little Bacchus with a vase in his hand seen in Bartolo Delfino's house in Venice by Carlo Ridolfi in the mid-16th century and misidentified as a Giorgione. Shipley (1979) believes the subject is a metaphor for the winter solstice, based on a letter in Macrobius's Saturnalia, known during the Renaissance – the new year started as a baby and ended as an old man. It may be drawn from the same studies as the figure of Bacchus in The Feast of the Gods, which is very similar.