183. Janiform Jug

Condition

Complete; the handle—if it is part of the original vessel—and a chip from the rim were reattached; surface presents some iridescence, sandy accretions, and pitting on the neck.

Description

In-folded, tubular, flaring rim; lopsided cylindrical neck; mold-blown body in the shape of two heads placed back-to-back. The vessel stands on a mildly irregular, flat resting surface. The vertical seam mark indicates that this juglet was blown in a two-part mold. Coil handle with an elbow has been applied on the shoulder and drawn up onto the lip, where it forms a thumb rest. Each side of the janiform body represents a chubby clean-shaven male face. Face A smiling; heavy cheeks and lips; flat, wide nose; accentuated eyebrow ridges. A relief, smooth band across the forehead with two horseshoe-shaped loops, apparently a symposiast’s fillet. Hair is rendered as 22 rows of straight ridges diagonally arranged. Face B is similar but flatter, and the cheekbones are more accentuated, the nose appears to be shorter, and the eyes are more rounded than Face A; the forehead is smaller, and two curved horns are visible at the corners. Face A could be identified as Dionysus and the other as a satyr (Stern 1995, pp. 243–246, nos. 143–144).

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 blown in molds with two vertical parts. Predominantly they are shaped as bottles or flasks, occasionally with one or two handles; jugs; and a few are cups 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 become common in northwestern Europe, and during the fourth century they were produced in Germany and Gaul. They render heads of deities, like Dionysus and Livia-Juno; a chubby curly-haired child, probably Eros or Dionysus; mythological creatures like Medusa; unusual and ethnic faces, e.g. grotesques or Ethiopians; and finally, heads of ordinary male Caucasian people, these last appearing only in northwestern provinces in the third–fourth centuries CE. 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 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. For handleless parallels with similar faces, see Glass from the Ancient World 1957, p. 143, no. 285; La Baume and Salomonson 1976, p. 37, no. 70, plate 8:70; 3000 Jahre Glaskunst, p. 83, no. 280; Stern 1995, pp. 243–246, nos. 143–144.

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. 170, no. 462.

Exhibitions

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