Lamp in the Shape of a Comic Mask in the Getty Villa, June 2016

Title: Lamp in the Form of a Comic Mask

Artist/Maker: Unknown

Culture: Roman

Place: Italy (Place Created)

Date: A.D. 75–125

Medium: Bronze

Object Number: 96.AQ.193

Dimensions: 6.9 × 12.5 cm (2 11/16 × 4 15/16 in.)

Credit Line: Gift of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman

Department: Antiquities

Classification: Implements

Object Type: Lamp


The body of this Roman lamp takes the form of a comic mask set on a low turned foot. Oil was added through the open mouth of the mask and the nozzle for the wick emerges below the beard. A pointed leaf decorates the space on top of the nozzle between the lamp's body and the small, round mouth. The mask represents the "Leading Slave", a sly and resourceful stock character from Greek New Comedy (about 320–290 B.C.), and shows the typical features of a scoop-shaped beard, snub nose, and furrowed brow. His open, upturned mouth is fringed with a finely incised semicircular beard and serves as the filling hole. Most of the hair is covered with a kerchief, from which short tassels of corkscrew curls emerge at the sides. The headdress is crowned with a wreath of ivy leaves and berries in high relief, which continues below to adorn the base of the lamp’s handle. Set low on the body, a fragment of the upswept loop handle survives in the form of a stylized vine with a turned-back leaf. Masks and other images alluding to the theater appear in all manner of decoration in Roman villas, from frescoes and other interior decoration to utensils and silverware.


Text from: www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/29629/unknown-maker-lamp-in-the-form-of-a-comic-mask-roman-ad-75-125