Description:
An expressive mask of a woman, carved in deep relief. Her mouth is agape. Probably the most striking element are her downward slanting, penetrating eyes, which have deeply recessed pupils. She has arching furrowed eyebrows. Her hair is piled high on top of her head and is modelled in ridged waves in the Flavian style.
This mask belongs to the category theatre masks, which are characterised by their wide-open mouths and eyes (Tober (2013), p. 205).
Background information:
Masks have always had a close connection to the theatre; however, in many cases they also had a religious function, especially in connection with Dionysos-Bacchus. See for example the words of the Roman poet Vergilius:
The Ausonian farmers, a race from Troy derived, make merry with rude verses and boisterous jest,
put on frowning masks of hollowed bark, invoke thee, O Bacchus, with joyous hymns,
and to thee hang swinging masks on tall pines (Publius Vergilius Maro, Georgica, II, 385).
Masks were used in cults of different deities since ancient times, but later they were used predominantly in the cult of Dionysos-Bacchus. The participants in religious activities believed that through this type of disguise they experienced the closeness to a deity more intensely, since they probably felt directly included in the sphere of activity. With a mask the worshippers attempted to put themselves in that carefree, blissful mood characteristic of all depictions of ecstatically dancing satyrs and maenads. On South-Italian vases scenes can be seen of a young man with a mask pulled up diagonally over his head, standing in front of Dionysus in one case, and in front of a woman with a sacrificial basket in another. In both cases there is no connection with the theatre. Rather, it is a depiction of a cult participant who put on the mask on the occasion of a cult celebration. A few other vase paintings also show worshippers and Dionysos, the god either accepting a mask or, conversely, handing it over, as an invitation to take part in a cult celebration. The mask might have been a favoured attribute of the god, because he is shown on vases quite often in a representative pose, holding a mask in his hand (Cain (1988), p. 175-181).
During excavations about a century ago in Palmyra, west of the temple of Bel, many stucco fragments were unearthed, including children's heads, representations of maenads and theatrical masks; these make a Dionysian context plausible, and a thiasis room has been mentioned in this context. In the courtyard adjoining the sanctuary of Baalshamin, the supreme god of the Palmyrene pantheon, similar appliques were embellishing a stuccoed cornice which adorned the top of the wall. Here the context was unequivocally religious: the courtyard welcomed the processions coming to celebrate the cult of Baalshamin. In 1975 the largest collection of stuccoes ever unearthed in Palmyra was found in a building where also an altar and a tabernacle, still in situ, were discovered, witness to the religious function of the room. Among the heads found there were theatre masks, satyrs as well as maenads, and muses. Here too several scholars have suggested that this points towards the celebration of the mysteries of the Dionysian resurrection in a thiasis room, which after all was located in the immediate vicinity of the Efqa spring, the essential source of water for the Palmyrene oasis (Parlasca (1996), p. 292; Haldimann (2006), p. 241-242).
Nevertheless, theatre masks were also used as an element of decoration in a non-religious context. Garland friezes with masks, oscilla, vessels and flowers, both painted or in terracotta, have been part of the decorative furnishings of private houses since the Hellenistic period. Such embellishment shows that well-to-do Palmyrenes had a preference for elaborate western decoration, in which stucco architectural decoration played an important role. Generally these heads are slightly more than ten centimeters high and were fabricated locally (Dirven (2018), p. 113). But while they contributed as allusions to a Dionysian context, at the same time they evoked a certain luxury, and referred to their original context in the theatre. The combination of masks and garlands, popular as a Dionysian symbol in funerary decorations, was considered to be so appealing that it was soon distributed without any connection to the sepulchral context (Tober (2013), p. 200-201; 207).
Stucco was used as a decorative element because of the climatic conditions prevailing in the Near East, with dry regions, poor in wood and sometimes also in stone. The use of stucco as an element of decoration is observed for the first time in Tell Anafa, Israel, dating from 125 B.C., and soon afterwards the new ornamental fashion became more wide-spread. Cornices adorning the top of the walls were made of stucco, and appliques in the shape of heads were attached to the stuccoed architectural elements, often by means of pegs. From the first century C.E., the use of stucco became widespread both in sanctuaries and in funerary architecture and private residences. Palmyra is the site of reference par excellence, with an abundant corpus of stuccoes unearthed there (Haldimann (2006), p. 240-241).
Palmyra, originally called Tadmor, was an oasis settlement in the northern Syrian desert. The inhabitants profited from their control of the caravan routes between Roman coastal Syria and Parthian territory to the east. Palmyra was strategically located on two important trade routes in the ancient world: one extended from the Far East and India to the head of the Persian Gulf, and the other, the Silk Road, stretched across the Eurasian continent to China.
Under the Roman emperor Tiberius (14–37 C.E.), Palmyra was incorporated into the province of Syria. During the reign of Hadrian, in circa 129 C.E., it rose to the rank of a free city, and in 212 C.E. to that of a Roman colony. Half a century later, after turmoil with the Sasanians, Palmyra was established as the capital of an independent and far-reaching Roman-style empire by Zenobia. In 272 C.E., Emperor Aurelian reconquered Palmyra (Milleker (2000), p. 112).
The name Palmyra occurs for the first time in the Natural History by Pliny the Elder (chapter 21, 25), who writes: "Palmyra is a city famous for the beauty of its site, the riches of its soil, and the delicious quality and abundance of its water. Its fields are surrounded by sands on every side, and are thus separated, as it were, by nature from the rest of the world." It is generally accepted that, like the Semitic Tadmor, the name indicates that it is a "place of palms"; see however Arbeitman (1988), p. 238-245; 248, note 11-12.
Bibliography:
- Agnes Allroggen-Bedel, Maskendarstellungen in der römisch-kampanischen Wandmalerei (München, Wilhelm Fink, 1974);
- Yoël L. Arbeitman, A Linguistic Happening in Memory of Ben Schwartz: Studies in Anatolian, Italic, and Other Indo-European Languages (Bibliothèque des Cahiers de l'Institut de linguistique de Louvain, 42) (Leuven, Peeters Publishers, 1988);
- Hans-Ulrich Cain, "Chronologie, Ikonographie und Bedeutung der römischen Maskenreliefs", Bonner Jahrbücher 188, p. 107-221;
- Lucinda Dirven, "Palmyrene Sculpture in Context. Between Hybridity and Heterogeneity" in Joan Aruz (ed.), Palmyra. Mirage in the Desert (The Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia) (New York, N.Y., Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), p. 110-119;
- Marc-André Haldimann - Marielle Martiniani-Reber, "Note sur deux sculptures romaines orientales nouvellement entrées dans nos collections", Genava. Revue d'histoire de l'art et d'archéologie, 54 (2006), p. 239-246;
- Miroslaw Kocur, The Power of Theater. Actors and Spectators in Ancient Rome (Interdisciplinary Studies in Performance, Volume 11) (Berlin - Bern - Bruxelles - New York - Oxford - Warszawa - Wien, Peter Lang, 2018);
- Elizabeth J. Milleker (ed.), The Year One. Art of the Ancient World East and West (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art - New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000);
- Klaus Parlasca, "Figürliche Stuckdekorationen aus Palmyra. Ältere Funde", Damaszener Mitteilungen, 2 (1985), p. 201-206, pls. 63-68;
- Klaus Parlasca, "Funde figürlicher Stuckdekorationen auf dem Gelände des Hotel Méridien in Palmyra", Les annales archéologiques arabes syriennes. Revue d'archéologie et d'histoire, 42 (1996), p. 291-296;
- Barbara Tober, "Stuck und Wandmalerei" in Andreas Schmidt-Colinet – Waleed al-As‘ad (Hrsg.), Palmyras Reichtum durch weltweiten Handel. Archäologische Untersuchungen im Bereich der hellenistischen Stadt. Band 1, Architektur und ihre Ausstattung (Wien, Holzhausen, 2013), p. 170-252.
Dating:
Circa 2nd-3rd century C.E.
Size:
Height 15.3 cm.
Provenance:
Swiss private collection, Geneva, 1970s; thereafter US private collection, Connecticut; with Bonhams London, 2008 (there, due to a mix-up with other objects from the same consignor, incorrectly described as coming from a Belgian private collection, acquired before 1960); with Sands of Time Ancient Art, Washington DC.
Condition:
Loss to the modeled hair and face on the left side, otherwise intact and in very good condition overall.
Price:
€ 3,950
Stock number:
A1348