Comic Mask

Beige in color (Munsell 7.5 yr 8/3–8/4), very hard and compact, with many small reflective inclusions; extensive traces of polychromy over a layer of white slip; brownish red (hair), pink (complexion).

Incrustations, white in color and calcareous, especially on the right side of the back section. The internal surfaces of the two holes on either side of the head are abraded, probably due to the original presence of metal elements.

Thomas Virzì, Italian, 1881–1974 (Munich, Germany)ⁱ; by 1994–96, Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman (New York, NY), donated to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996.

Passion for Antiquities 1994, p. 354, no. 222; Acquisitions 1996–98, p. 67.

The mask presents a rounded skullcap and two holes for hanging in the upper section of the head. The general characteristics suggest that it is associated with the New Comedy character Colax, an adulator (vain flatterer), described by Pollux and also documented in the corpus of theatrical masks of Lipari in five separate examples. This character has a malevolent, ambiguous smile, an oval face with puffy cheeks, a strong jaw, and a long, thin nose. The convex forehead features a cleft in the central area and a frontal eminence above that. The eyes are half closed with the upper eyelids partially lowered; the eyebrows are raised in an arching curve; the mouth is broad and wide open, with fleshy lips; the chin is full, with a dimple. The hair, painted red, forms a crown of radial striations around the forehead, with a raised section in the middle. The Colax masks from Lipari, found in stratigraphic contexts associated with vases in the style of Gnathia and of the Lipari Painter, can be dated to the first half of the third century BC.¹ Hypothetically, the Colax mask might be attributable to the Apulian area and, though there is no direct comparison with other Tarentine masks, it can be placed in the larger repertory of theatrical terracottas that characterize the local production and the funerary votive deposits of the third century BC.²

Notes