The statuette is made of solid bronze. It depicts a standing male figure, clad in a short cloak (which the Greeks called a chlamys) fastened over the right shoulder with a circular fibula. The man extends his right arm towards the viewer, whilst his left arm is entirely concealed beneath the cloak. In his visible hand, clenched into a fist, he held an attribute. His feet are clad in high ankle boots, fastened with incised laces. His hair, cut short, covers his head like a cap; a few strands are indicated by regular engravings. A button in the centre of the skull probably served to secure a headdress.
Like almost all Syrian terracotta statuettes dated to this period, this figurine was hand-modeled in a very stylized, almost instinctive manner; it is seated on a simplified stool.
The statuette depicts a standing man, with a mask, which characterizes him as an actor. He is dressed in a large cloak. As it is usually the case at that time for terracotta examples, our figurine was molded in two parts, the front and the back.
Grotesque Terracotta Head (perhaps a Mime or an Actor)
Grotesque Terracotta Head (perhaps a Mime or an Actor)
The statuettes of “grotesques” often represented mimes, street actors, music players, dancers, or even street vendors or workers suffering from physical deformities or afflictions that the sculptors treated in an exaggerated manner, to create a caricature-like effect. At the end of the Hellenistic period, in the large urban centers such as Rome and Alexandria, the theatrical genre of pantomime (according to tradition, this genre was created by Sophron of Syracuse in the 5th century B.C. already) was very popular.
This face certainly represents a male figure; it shows some of the distinctive features of the Greek-Roman images known as “grotesque”, such as the big aquiline and pointed nose, the strongly marked, frowning eyebrows and the wrinkled forehead.