Condition
Intact; some areas iridescent, others covered with incrustation.
Description
Cracked-off, everted rim; broad, conical neck, tapering toward the body; mold-blown head-shaped body; flat bottom. Body in form of youthful, clean-shaven male head, with straight long hair to the nape of the neck and fringe of twelve vertical locks over the forehead. Large, almond-shaped eyes with pronounced pupils staring toward the upper right; soft eyebrows; straight wide nose; small mouth with full lips; round chin; large ears. Conical base formed of three and a half revolutions of a thick trail. A wishbone strap handle is applied to mid-neck in a large pad, drawn out and up, forming a horizontal part that was tooled into a thumb-rest tab, with acute angle below, and drawn vertically down to the upper part of the head’s back and trailed off down to the base, with decoration of 18 horizontal ribs notched between lower attachment and bottom. The handle and the base are made of a different type of glass, seemingly opaque black glass, possibly dark green. Made in a two-part mold with open base—as evidenced by the plain, rough surface of the undersurface of the body. No pontil mark on the bottom. Vertical mold seam behind the ears incorporated in the hair, visible only on the left side of the vessel.
Comments and Comparanda
See comments and comparanda, cat. 176.
This flask and cat. 182 belong to a well-defined group of head flasks, from a workshop creating products all made of a distinctive cobalt-blue translucent glass (Harden, Donald Benjamin, Hansgerd Hellenkemper, Kenneth S. Painter, and David Whitehouse. 1987. Glass of the Caesars, exh. cat. Milan: Olivetti., p. 175, no. 96; Whitehouse, David B. 1997. “A Distinctive Group of Late Roman Glass Vessels.” In Ultra terminum vagari. Scritti in onore di Carl Nylander, ed. Börje Magnusson, P. Vian, S. Renzetti, and S. J. Voicu, 367–375. Rome: Quasar., p. 370; Lightfoot, Christopher S. 2020. “A Mold-Blown Head Flask: Late Roman Glass in a Wider Context.” Journal of Glass Studies 62: 83–94., pp. 83–84). All these flasks present, with small differences, as the head of a clean-shaven youth with large, almond-shaped eyes and well-arranged, flowing locks that are typical of late Roman portraiture. The workshop produced free-, dip mold–, and mold-blown vessels, which all had an applied coil base, and the handles are wishbone-shaped, drawn down from the neck to the body, often pinched (Harden, Donald Benjamin, Hansgerd Hellenkemper, Kenneth S. Painter, and David Whitehouse. 1987. Glass of the Caesars, exh. cat. Milan: Olivetti., p. 175, no. 96; Whitehouse, David B. 1997. “A Distinctive Group of Late Roman Glass Vessels.” In Ultra terminum vagari. Scritti in onore di Carl Nylander, ed. Börje Magnusson, P. Vian, S. Renzetti, and S. J. Voicu, 367–375. Rome: Quasar., pp. 367–375; Lightfoot, Christopher S. 2020. “A Mold-Blown Head Flask: Late Roman Glass in a Wider Context.” Journal of Glass Studies 62: 83–94., pp. 83–93). For direct parallels, see Harden, Donald Benjamin, Hansgerd Hellenkemper, Kenneth S. Painter, and David Whitehouse. 1987. Glass of the Caesars, exh. cat. Milan: Olivetti., p. 175, no. 96; Platz-Horster, Gertrud. 1976. Antike Gläser: Ausstellung, November 1976–Februar 1977, Antikenmuseum Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Berlin: Antikenmuseum Berlin., p. 45, no. 70; Whitehouse, David B. 2001. Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass, vol. 2. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass., pp. 74–76, no. 548; Whitehouse, David B. 1997. “A Distinctive Group of Late Roman Glass Vessels.” In Ultra terminum vagari. Scritti in onore di Carl Nylander, ed. Börje Magnusson, P. Vian, S. Renzetti, and S. J. Voicu, 367–375. Rome: Quasar., pp. 367, 370, 374, plate 1; Lightfoot, Christopher S. 2020. “A Mold-Blown Head Flask: Late Roman Glass in a Wider Context.” Journal of Glass Studies 62: 83–94., pp. 83–93, esp. 83–84.
Provenance
By 1981, Private Collection (Switzerland); 1985, Ernst Kofler, 1899–1989, and Marthe Truniger, 1918–1999 (Lucerne, Switzerland); 1985, Private Collection [sold, Ancient Glass: Formerly the Kofler-Truniger Collection, Christie’s, London, March 5–6, 1985, lot 86, to Mansour Gallery]; 1985, Mansour Gallery (London, England), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1985
Bibliography
Kunz, Martin, ed. 1981. 3000 Jahre Glaskunst: Von der Antike bis zum Jugendstil, exh. cat. Lucerne: Kunstmuseum., pp. 5, 84, no. 290.
Fischer, Peter. “Kunst und Antiquitätenmarkt: Pingpong mit antikem Glas.” Die Kunst 97, part 1 (May): 398–399., p. 398.
Ancient Glass. Formerly the Kofler-Truniger Collection, March 5–6, 1985, sale cat. London: Christie’s., lot 86.
“Acquisitions/1985.” J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 14 (1986): 175–286., p. 196, no. 70.
Drury, Elizabeth, ed. 1986. Antiques: Traditional Techniques of the Master Craftsmen. Furniture, Glass, Ceramics, Gold, Silver, and Much More. London: Macmillan., p. 101.
Whitehouse, David B. 1997. “A Distinctive Group of Late Roman Glass Vessels.” In Ultra terminum vagari. Scritti in onore di Carl Nylander, ed. Börje Magnusson, P. Vian, S. Renzetti, and S. J. Voicu, 367–375. Rome: Quasar., p. 370, appendix: no. A3.
The J. Paul Getty Museum Handbook of the Antiquities Collection. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002., p. 209.
The J. Paul Getty Museum Handbook of the Antiquities Collection. Rev. ed. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010., p. 219.
Wight, Karol. 2011. Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum., pp. 97, 101, 104, fig. 72.
Exhibitions
Ancient Art from the Permanent Collection (Los Angeles, 1999–2004)
Reflecting Antiquity: Modern Glass Inspired by Ancient Rome (Malibu, 2007–2008; Corning, 2008)