Since its discovery in 1727, this figure's identity has been debated. His disproportionately large head has a prominent nose, canines and whites of the eyes originally inlaid in silver, and hair and a beard once rendered in a matte black metal inlay. The circular area on the back of his head may have been for an attached curl of hair. The close-fitting garment reveals his misshapen body, and he wears sandals. Prevailing scholarly opinion has called the figure a mime and dated it to the first century B.C./A.D. A recent suggestion is that he is a caricature of an Alexandrian pedant, datable in the early second century B.C.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Bronze grotesque
Period:Hellenistic
Date:2nd century BCE–1st century CE
Culture:Greek
Medium:Bronze
Dimensions:Overall: 4 x 1 1/4 x 7/8 in. (10.2 x 3.2 x 2.2 cm)
Classification:Bronzes
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1912
Object Number:12.229.6
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1913. "Department of Classical Art: Recent Accessions of 1912." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 8(2):
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1913. "Department of Classical Art: The Accessions of 1912. Bronzes." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 8(12): p. 266, fig. 1.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1915. Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes. no. 127, pp. 81–84, New York: Gilliss Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1917. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 159, fig. 101, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 196–97, fig. 135, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1930. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 196–97, fig. 135, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1936[1934]. A Guide to the Collections, Part 1: Ancient and Oriental Art, 2nd edn. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Bieber, Margarete. 1939. The History of the Greek and Roman Theater. p. 419, fig. 554, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1950. The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, 3rd edn. pp. 82, 421, fig. 223, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 126, 265, pl. 105a, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Reuterswärd, Patrik. 1980. Studien zur Polychromie der Plastik. p. 128, n. 313, Stockholm: Bokförlaget Svenska.
Kozloff, Arielle and David Gordon Mitten. 1988. The Gods Delight : The Human Figure in Classical Bronze no. 28, pp. 164–67, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art.
Moevs, Maria Teresa Marabini. 2000. "On the Capponi Grotesque in the Metropolitan Museum of Art." From the Parts to the Whole: Acta of the 13th International Bronze Congress held at Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 28 - June 1, 1996, Carol Mattusch, Amy Brauer, and Sandra E. Knudsen, eds. pp. 254–60, figs. 1–3, Portsmith, R.I.: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 183, pp. 161, 439, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Trentin, Lisa. 2015. The Hunchback in Hellenistic and Roman Art. cat. 8, pp. 78–79, 97, 111, pl. 8(1)–(2), London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Zanker, Paul, Seán Hemingway, Christopher S. Lightfoot, and Joan R. Mertens. 2019. Roman Art : A Guide through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Collection. p. 391 n. 34, New York: Scala Publishers.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
