Bronze statuette of a veiled and masked dancer | All | Greek and Roman Art | Collection Database | Works of Art

Description

The complex motion of this dancer is conveyed exclusively through the interaction of the body with several layers of dress. Over an undergarment that falls in deep folds and trails heavily, the figure wears a lightweight mantle, drawn taut over her head and body by the pressure applied to it by her right arm, left hand, and right leg. Its substance is conveyed by the alternation of sharp pleats and flat surfaces as well as by their contrast to both the tubular folds pushing through from below and the freely curling softness of the fringe. The woman's face is covered by the sheerest of veils, discernible at its edge below her hairline and at the cutouts for the eyes. Her extended right foot shows a laced slipper. This dancer has been convincingly identified as one of the professional entertainers, a combination of mime and dancer, for which the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria was famous in antiquity.

ProvenanceSaid to be from Alexandria (Thompson 1950, p. 379).

Until 1948, collection of Joseph Brummer; September 14, 1948, purchased by Walter C. Baker from the estate of Joseph Brummer; acquired June 23, 1972, bequest of Walter C. Baker.

Selected BibliographyThompson, D. B. 1950. "A Bronze Dancer from Alexandria." American Journal of Archaeology 54: 371-85, figs. 1-3, 11, 14.

Bothmer, D. von. 1950. Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities: An Exhibition from the Collection of Walter Cummings Baker, Esq. New York, p. 9, no. 46, ill.

Bothmer, Dietrich von. 1961. Ancient Art from New York Private Collections: Catalogue of an Exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 37-38, no. 144, pls. 44, 50, 51.

Bothmer, Dietrich von. 1975. In The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Notable Acquisitions, 1965-1975. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 120, ill.

Mertens, J. R. 1985. "Greek Bronzes in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." MMA Bulletin, n.s., 43, no. 2: 48-49, no. 32.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1987. Greece and Rome. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 70, pl. 52.

True, M. 1988. In S. Fabing et al., The Gods Delight: The Human Figure in Classical Bronze. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 102-6, no. 14.

Raftopoulou, E. G. 1991. "Étude iconographique sur un thème de la toreutique." Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 115: 269-72, fig. 14.

Pfisterer-Haas, S. 1994. "Die bronzenen Zwergentänzer." In Das Wrack: Der antike Schiffsfund von Mahdia, edited by G. H. Salies. Cologne: Rheinland-Verlag, vol. 1, pp. 485, 501, n. 16, fig. 9.

Llewellyn-Jones, L. 2003. Aphrodite's Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece. London: Classical Press of Wales, p. 64, figs. 72, 73, and frontispiece.

Hemingway, S. 2007. "From Gods to Grotesques: Hellenistic Bronze Sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum." Apollo 166 (May): 50, 52, fig. 2.

Picón, C. A., et al. 2007. Art of the Classical World in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 451, no. 237, ill. pp. 202-3.

Schultz, P. and R. von den Hoff, eds. 2007. Early Hellenistic Portraiture: Image, Style, Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 65, n. 14.

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