[1] The sculpture was created by Jacopo Sansovino to decorate the garden of Giovanni Bartolini, in Florence, as part of a program of recovery of the forms of classical antiquity as was being promoted by the Neoplatonic Academy.

It was later bought by Cosimo I and went to decorate his apartment in the Palazzo Vecchio, with works by Michelangelo, Baccio Bandinelli and Benvenuto Cellini.

[2] The current work was widely admired in Florence and much better known than Michelangelo's Bacchus (who only arrived in the city in 1571 or 1572), and it was taken as a model for sculptors and painters.

In 1864 Perkins called it "one of the best statues ever conceived according to the ancient spirit", and French historian Salomon Reinach, in is Répertoire de la Statuaire Grecque et Romaine (1897, 3 volumes), even mistook it for an ancient work, including it among the iconographies of Dionysus, although it had already been published by Gori in his repertoire of Florentine sculpture.

It seems likely that the artist was inspired by several works, including, as indicated by Daniela Gallo, the Apollo Belvedere for Bacchus, and one of the Dioscuri di Montecavallo for the little satyr behind him.