Fourteen of these figures are said to have been found together in a burial in Attica. They are among the earliest known statuettes of actors and are superbly executed and preserved. Originally they were brightly painted. They document the beginning of standardized characters and masks, indicating the popularity not of a specific figure but of types—the old man, the slave, the courtesan, etc.—that appeared repeatedly in different plays. By the mid-fourth century B.C., Attic examples or local copies were known throughout the Greek world, from Southern Russia to Spain.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta statuette of an actor
Period:Late Classical
Date:late 5th–early 4th century BCE
Culture:Greek
Medium:Terracotta
Dimensions:H. 4 3/4 in. (12.1 cm)
Classification:Terracottas
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1913
Object Number:13.225.27
Said to have been found in Athens
[Until 1913, with Costis A. Lembessis, Athens and Paris]; acquired in 1913, purchased from Lembessis in Paris.
McClees, Helen and Christine Alexander. 1933. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections, 5th ed. pp. 21–22, fig. 26, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Bieber, Margarete. 1939. The History of the Greek and Roman Theater. pp. 85, 87, fig. 124, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
McClees, Helen and Christine Alexander. 1941. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections, 6th ed. pp. 21–22, fig. 26, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 112, 253, pl. 93a, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
von Bothmer, Dietrich. 1978. Antichnoe iskusstvo iz muzeia Metropoliten, Soedinennye Shtaty Ameriki: Katalog vystavki. no. 66, Moscow: Sovetskii Khudozhnik.
Pinney, Gloria Ferrari and Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway. 1979. Aspects of Ancient Greece p. 251, Allentown, Penn.: Allentown Art Museum.
Musée & Galerie des Beaux-Arts. 1981. Profil du Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York : de Ramsès à Picasso. no. 47, pp. 58–59, Paris: Musée & Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux.
Csapo, Eric and William J. Slater. 1994. The Context of Ancient Drama. pp. 70–1, pl. 9, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 181, pp. 160, 438, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Shapiro, H. Alan. 2010. "Middle Comedy Figurines of Actors." The Art of Ancient Greek Theater, Dr. Mary Louise Hart, ed. p. 64, pl. 64, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Karoglou, Kyriaki. 2016. "The Collection of Greek Terracotta Figurines at The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Les Carnets de l’ACoSt, 14: pp. 3–4, n. 21 [p.8], fig. 7a.
Hemingway, Seán. 2021. How to Read Greek Sculpture. no. 22, pp. 104–106, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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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.
