Getty Museum

Miniature Theatrical Mask of an Old Man

Date

about 3rd century B.C.

Medium

Terracotta with polychromy

Culture

Greek

Department

Sculpture

Institution

Getty Museum

In the Hellenistic Greek world, after the death of Alexander the Great, the production of terracotta figurines and masks boomed. Many of these terracottas drew on the world of the theater for their subject matter. The most popular form of theater in this period, the so-called New Comedy, used a cast of stock characters and drew its humor from the trials of daily life. This miniature theatrical mask represents a grotesque figure from one of these plays, perhaps an old man. Like many Greek comedy masks, this one represents the antithesis of Greek ideals of beauty with large ears and broad, hooked nose. The wear on the mask makes it difficult to determine precisely whom or what it was meant to represent. It may be a standard character of New Comedy, the greedy parasite or flatterer. On the other hand, the features are so extreme that the face may not even be meant to be human. Its bestial features bear a resemblance to the goat-god Pan.

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