176. Head Flask of Antinous as Dionysus

Condition

Fully preserved; slight iridescence on the surface; milky crust on some parts of the interior. The tip of the nose has been restored.

Description

Fire-polished vertical rim; cylindrical neck, tapering toward the body, constricted at its base; flat bottom. Body in shape of a young beardless male head wearing an ivy wreath in crisp relief. The face has idealized features: large almond-shaped eyes with heavy lids and recessed pupils gazing ahead; narrow, straight nose; proportional, slightly open mouth with full lips; round chin with a large central dimple. Around the face is an ivy wreath with a wide, smooth convex band above the forehead, flanked by clusters of round berries at the temples and three heart-shaped leaves on each side of the face. The hair is rendered as large tufts around the face and very flat, irregular wavy vertical ridges on the back of the head. Blown into a bipartite mold of two unequal vertical sections, open at the base. Mold seams concealed in hair behind the ears. An annular pontil mark (W. 1 cm) is visible at the center of the slightly concave bottom. Neck and rim free-blown and tooled. A fine trail of glass is wound two times around the middle of the neck. Cylindrical, pronounced overblow over the head.

Comments and Comparanda

Head-shaped glass vessels represent the shape of a human head in the round or of two (known as janiform) or multiple heads arranged back-to-back. They are mold-blown, almost exclusively in molds with two vertical parts. Predominantly they are shaped as bottles or flasks, occasionally with one or two handles; jugs; and a few cups, which are made only as single heads. They first appear in the early first century CE, in the late Augustan era, probably in the eastern Mediterranean, and the earlier forms are jugs and one-handled flasks. In the first century they were produced in the eastern Mediterranean and probably Italy as well, during the second and third centuries they were predominantly made on the Syro-Palestinian coast, from the third century they became common in northwestern Europe, and during the fourth century they were produced in Germany and Gaul. They render heads of deities, like Dionysus; a chubby curly-haired child, probably Eros or Dionysus; mythological creatures such as Medusa; unusual and ethnic faces, e.g., grotesques or Ethiopians; and, finally, heads of ordinary Caucasian people, these last appearing only in the northwestern provinces in the third–fourth centuries. Dionysus and the chubby child appear mostly in the eastern Mediterranean, Medusa in both east and west, and ethnic types, grotesques, and ordinary people predominantly in Italy and the northwestern European provinces (Isings 1957, pp. 93–94, forms 78a, 78b; Stern 1995, pp. 201–215). On janiform unguentaria, see cat. 200 and Antonaras 2009, pp. 324–326, form 146 = Antonaras 2017, pp. 163–164. For jugs in the shape of ordinary heads, see Antonaras 2009, pp. 256–257, form 96 = Antonaras 2017, pp. 129–130. On a special group of cobalt blue ordinary heads, see Whitehouse 1997b, p. 370; Lightfoot 2020, pp. 83–84. For direct parallels, see Bucovalǎ 1968, pp. 115–116, no. 237; Sorokina 1968, pp. 185–186, figs. 1, 2: cup; Stern 1995, pp. 230–232, no. 148: flask with cut-off rim; Kunina 1997, pp. 282–283, no. 153 = Sorokina 1968, p. 184, figs. 6–7; Arveiller-Dulong and Nenna 2005, pp. 194–195, no. 539: cup; Hendriks and Halbertsma 2019, p. 43.

Provenance

By 1974–1988, Erwin Oppenländer, 1901–1988 (Waiblingen, Germany), by inheritance to his son, Gert Oppenländer, 1988; 1988–2003, Gert Oppenländer (Waiblingen, Germany), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003

Bibliography

von Saldern et al. 1974, p. 171, no. 467.

Stern 1995, p. 232 n. 8a.

Kunina 1997, p. 283, “Analogies” for no. 153.

Wight 2011, pp. 76, 85, fig. 56.

Exhibitions

Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity (Malibu, 2006; 2007)

Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)