Group representing a Grotesque Nurse and her Baby
Group representing a Grotesque Nurse and her Baby
This statue was cast into a rosy beige clay covered with a white slip. The old woman, is seated on a stool; her face is covered with a grotesque mask and her gaze directed toward the baby she holds in her naked arms.
4th century B.C.
H: 9 cm
In stock
Product Description
The old woman, entirely draped in a large cloak surmounting her chiton, is seated on a stool; her face is covered with a grotesque mask (that recalls the head of a monkey), whose melancholic gaze is directed toward the baby she holds in her bare arms. The child, whose head only and part of the swaddled body are visible, has a wide, round face that suggests an adult male rather than a baby; he wears a triangular pilos on his head. The statuette was molded, but is not hollowed; it was then perfectly modeled in every detail.
During the late 5th and following century, different types of terracotta examples appeared in various regions of Greece, representing theatrical characters such as the seated or the standing slave, the old man or woman, the nurse with her baby, Heracles, the young veiled woman, etc. These characters were standardized and belonged to different comedies of the ancient repertoire: the large group of Attic statuettes, now housed in New York, that constitutes one of the most important and rare direct connections with the Middle Comedy, certainly belongs to this series.
Our example, whose type is attested by the few parallels coming from mainland Greece (Attica, Corinth, Boeotia), can probably be seen as the grotesque or satirical version of the theatrical character of the old seated nurse holding or breastfeeding her swaddled baby, that appeared circa the middle of the 4th century. Another variant can also mentioned, with the figurines representing the old woman standing upright on a small square base, and the child wearing, like here, a sort of conical hat.
