Piece of mosaic glass inlay depicting a mask from new comedy

Polychrome glass; broken around the edges
Egypt; 1st century AD
Length 2.3cm
Nicholson Museum R287; purchased in Egypt by Sir Charles Nicholson during his first trip there in 1856/7, and donated by him to the University of Sydney in 1860

The fragment has a bright green background. The mask is that of an Old Man of Comedy. It has layered hair, with further strands or curls at the bottom below the ears, and with a fairly full beard of straight hair. The hair, moustache and beard are white with golden-brown detailing. The face is yellow, with the outline of nose, eye and brows shown in black. The mouth-hole is black, outlined by red lips. Red is also used for the wrinkles at the bridge of the nose and for the creases in the cheeks. In the eye, the iris is yellow and the corners of the eye red.

It seems likely that most glass plaques of this type were manufactured in Alexandria, but they seem to have had a wide distribution and could well have been imitated elsewhere. The period of manufacture is not certain although such little archaeological evidence as there is tends to suggest that the bulk belong to the 1st century AD, and such a date is consonant with the style of the masks represented in the series.

The mask is that of one of the Leading Old Men of New Comedy of which two types were in common use after the Early Hellenistic period. One has a roll or “wreath” of fairly straight hair and a reasonably full beard with straight sides and square bottom. The other has wavy hair and a beard that tends to taper towards the bottom. They remained distinct during the Hellenistic period and were an important practical element in staging: there is good evidence that hairstyles distinguished families on the stage - so that, for instance, the father, son and slave of one family would have wavy hair, and those of another straight hair.

Under the Empire, however, the fine distinctions between mask-types within a given category (young men, slaves, old men, courtesans) began to blur. One can still find examples that are clearly one or the other sort of Old Man even as late as the 3rd century AD, but more often it is difficult to say more than that a given mask is of an old man. One suspects that it is not that the artist was unaware of the finer points of stage production, but that these finer details were becoming less relevant on stage where costume came to have a greater importance in the distinction of role-types. Whatever the actual case on stage, it seems to have been a growingly strong convention in the arts of the Roman period to show the masks of Old Men as having yellow faces.