Description:
This is a wonderfully modelled Egyptian head, made of natural buff brown clay, depicting a male with grotesque and exaggerated features. Heads like this, and also complete figurines, were produced in late Hellenistic times, especially in Alexandria. The artisans, fascinated with realism, started to reproduce scenes and figures from daily life. Many figurines exist of children as well as old people, with a certain emphasis on ill and deformed persons. Some have caricature features; these are usually referred to as grotesques. It has been suggested that they were influenced by the exaggerated features of theatrical masks.
The bulging forehead of our head, which has an enlarged cranium, is furrowed and the knitted brow is thickened. The heavy eyebrows, frowning angrily, and the piercing eyes are rendered in sharp relief, as is the long, thin nose with its nostrils. The lips are slightly parted and especially the thick, pendulous lower lip lends the face an unpleasant, almost aggressive expression. The clearly defined bone structure is shown in an masterly manner under the realistically rendered facial muscles and the sagging skin. As Török has remarked, the knitted brow and the shape of the mouth are features which associate the type with the world of the lower social strata represented with express malice in Hellenistic terracottas.
Literature:
László Török, Hellenistic and Roman Terracottas from Egypt (Bibliotheca Archaeologica, 15; Monumenta antiquitatis extra fines Hungariae reperta, quae in Museo artium Hungarico aliisque museis et collectionibus Hungaricis conservantur, 4) (Roma, L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1995), especially p. 143-168 for "Genre, theatre and grotesquerie";
Cornelia Ewigleben - Jochen von Grumbkow (Hrsg.), Götter, Gräber & Grotesken. Tonfiguren aus dem Alltagsleben im römischen Ägypten (Bilderhefte des Museums für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, 25) (Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, 1991);
Jutta Fischer, Thomas Zachmann a.o., Griechisch-römische Terrakotten aus Ägypten. Die Sammlungen Sieglin und Schreiber (Tübinger Studien zur Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte, 14) (Tübingen, Wasmuth, 1994);
Jean-Pierre Cèbe, La caricature et la parodie dans le monde romain antique des origines à Juvénal (Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, 206) (Paris, De Boccard, 1966), especially p. 354-359;
Mette Fjeldhagen, Graeco-Roman Terracottas from Egypt. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 1995);
Françoise Dunand, Terres cuites gréco-romaines d'Égypte (Paris, Musée du Louvre, département des antiquités égyptiennes; Réunion des musées nationaux, 1990), p. 210 ff., especially p. 230 and p. 268-276 with many examples;
Céline Boutantin, "Une figurine caricaturale au Musée du Caire", Chronique d'Égypte 74, no. 147 (1999), p. 161-170.
Dating:
Hellenistic – Roman Period, ca. 200 B.C. – 200 C.E.
Size:
Height ca. 3.3 cm, width 2.8 cm, depth 3.7 cm; height including base 7.3 cm.
Provenance:
Dutch private collection; ex Secret Eye Gallery, New York, acquired in the 1970s.
Condition:
Fragment from a larger figure, with some of the usual minor damage and losses, as visible on the photographs; small drill hole underneath, possibly from an earlier attempt to add a stand; mounted; superb modelling.
SOLD
Stock number:
E0679