Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This applique head may depict a theater mask. The face is large, with a well-sculpted nose and mouth, and has deeply hollowed eyes with sharp lids above and below (1). A band is visible on the brow below the hair, which is arranged in an elaborately waved coiffure. Parted in the middle and framing the face with wavy locks, the hairstyle is similar to that of second- to third-century CE Roman empresses, such as Julia Domna. The reverse is concave.
Appliques in the form of heads were used to decorate a variety of objects in the Roman world (2). Applique masks with ring loops, like the Harvard example, are also known (3).
NOTES:
1. Compare a head applique of similar size, with lead solder on the reverse, in the Louvre, Paris, inv. no. Br 560; and see a selection of bronze theater masks, mostly comic but one tragic, of similar size in the collection Dutuit, in J. Petit, Bronzes Antiques de la Collection Dutuit: Grecs, hellénistiques, romains et de l’Antiquité tardive (Paris, 1980) 133-36, nos. 62-68.
2. See L. Pirzio Biroli Stefanelli, ed., Il bronzo dei Romani: Arredo e suppellettile (Rome, 1990) 59, 182, 230, 232-33, 268, and 278-79, nos. 47, 93, 95, and 100, figs. 28 (a furniture fragment), 151 (a lamp), 213-14 (a braiser), 216-17 (a stand), and 265 (a cover).
3. See T. Tomasevic Buck, “Authepsae, auch ein Instrument der ärztlichen Versorgung?” in From the Parts to the Whole: Acta of the 13th International Bronze Congress, held at Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 28 - June 1, 1996, eds. C. C. Mattusch, A Brauer, and S. E. Knudsen (Portsmouth, RI, 2002) 2: 213-32, esp. 224-25.
Lisa M. Anderson
