.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Belonging to a group known as “boat-shaped cups,” this vessel features a mask in the form of a cook from New Comedy. He is defined by a wide, megaphone-like mouth forming the opening of the vessel, a broad snub nose, convex almond-shaped eyes, exaggerated arching brows, a creased forehead, and a bald pate. Similar examples have been found from the Black Sea to North Africa. For a related example from Pompeii featuring a phallus inside the mouth, see the example in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. no. 27859 (no. 663 in N.C. Stampolidis and Y. Tassoulas, eds., Eros: From Hesiod’s Theogony to Late Antiquity).
When on loan to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was described as such: “It is fashioned in a manner that requires the drinker to sip the wine from the mouth of a grotesque creature. By the time the cup was emptied, the user would have been face-to-face with the mask. This type of interaction between drinker and cup was perhaps a wry reflection or commentary on the user’s own state of inebriation.”
When on loan to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was described as such: “It is fashioned in a manner that requires the drinker to sip the wine from the mouth of a grotesque creature. By the time the cup was emptied, the user would have been face-to-face with the mask. This type of interaction between drinker and cup was perhaps a wry reflection or commentary on the user’s own state of inebriation.”