Plastic Vessel in the shape of a Head of an African
Plastic Vessel in the shape of a Head of an African
This vessel is modeled with great naturalism in the shape of a head of a young African, as if the coroplast was an anthropologist who wished to depict the physical appearance of an unfamiliar population.
3rd century B.C., 4th century B.C.
H: 14.8 cm
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Product Description
This vessel is modeled with great naturalism in the shape of a head of a young African, as if the coroplast was an anthropologist who wished to depict the physical appearance of an unfamiliar population: the face shows an obvious prognathism, the lips are full, the nose is pug-shaped and the eyebrows are strongly emphasized. The curly hair is rendered by the twisted vertical locks that fall on the forehead and at the back of the skull.
The neck of the vessel is an ample cylinder modeled over the head of the young man: its shape recalls that of a kalathos (the harvesting basket filled with fruits and wheat, mostly carried by the deities of abundance and fertility like Isis, Serapis, Tyche/Fortuna). The vase has no handle.
In the world of Greek pottery, the tradition of modeling vessels in the shape of heads of Africans dates back to the late 6th century B.C., when several Attic workshops made such single or janiform vases. Among the closest chronological parallels for our example, one should mention two oinochoi, which were found in the Italian Colonial world and are dated to the early Hellenistic period. But this iconographic type has been remarkably and long successful, since similar containers or lamps reproducing heads of Africans were still popular in the Imperial period (2nd-3rd century A.D., made of sigillated clay, but also of bronze).
The term used in contemporary Greek texts to refer to the inhabitants of Africa was Aithiops (Αιθιοψ, to which ancient and modern lexicographers assign the meaning “of burnt face”; the same word, Aethiops, existed in Latin). In modern languages, it only indicates today a specific part of the African continent and a precise ethnic group (Ethiopia, Ethiopians).
