The Reign of Comus is a Renaissance painting by Lorenzo Costa for the () of Isabella d'Este in the Ducal Palace, Mantua. It is made from tempera on canvas, and measures . It is now kept in the Louvre in Paris.
The first paintings for the were completed by Andrea Mantegna. Although he appears to have started Reign of Comus, it was completed after his death by Costa between 1506 and 1511, after he had been named court painter.
The iconography of this painting is complex. To the left of the foreground tree, a sitting Comus, the ruler of a land of bacchanals, with his head tilted looks at Venus. To his right, Apollo seems to serenade another sitting woman. In the center, Dionysus strokes the hair of a drunken maiden, identified as Nicaea. She had spurned his advances; and he overpowered her with wine in order to rape her. Meanwhile, to the right of an elaborate arch, Janus Bifrons and Hermes shoo away poorly clothed figures from the enjoyments of Comus.
The elaborate painting may have a moral justifying some of the virtues of reveling, or perhaps it is a melancholic work which exalts as virtuous, only Nicaea, the one character oblivious to the orgies around her.