A young god in a flying pink cloak leaps from a chariot drawn by two spotted cheetahs, his eyes fixed on a woman at the far left. She stands on the shore in a blue gown with a red sash, one hand raised, a tiny ship sailing away behind her and a ring of stars above. At the right, dancers, musicians and satyrs crowd after the god, one of them wrapped in snakes. The story, told by Ovid and Catullus, is that Theseus has abandoned the Cretan princess Ariadne on the island of Naxos.

Bacchus, returning from India with his followers, falls in love at first sight and promises her the stars; in one version he later throws her crown into the sky, where it becomes the constellation Corona Borealis. Titian painted the picture for Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, as one of a series of bacchanals for his Alabaster Room, finishing it in Ferrara in early 1523. It replaced a picture the duke had commissioned from Raphael, who died in 1520, and Titian modeled the snake-wrapped figure on the ancient Laocoön sculpture. After Ferrara passed to the papacy in 1598 the painting went to Rome; it reached England in the early 1800s, and the National Gallery bought it in 1826.

It is in the National Gallery in London.