With his signature blend of wide-ranging erudition and lively, accessible prose, Morgan Meis explores Franz Marc’s painting “The Fate of the Animals” in depth, guided in part by a series of letters Marc wrote to his wife Maria while he was a soldier in the First World War.

The Drunken Silenus is a book that is as hard to categorize as it is to put down—an enlightening and mesmerizing blend of philosophy, history, and art criticism. Morgan Meis begins simply enough, with a painting by the Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens of the figure from Greek mythology who is mentor to Dionysus, god of wine and excess of every kind. The narrative spirals out from there….