Lot 21

Description

Egypt, Alexandria, Hellenistic to Roman period, (3rd century BCE to 4th century AD), terracotta grotesque rendered in a reddish brown buff clay, the features exagerrated and displaying a developed interest in realism, heavy set brows frame oval eyes from which a rambunctious nose potrudes, the mouth set agape and leering, the bone structure of a skull is visible beneath the musculature of a bald head, the neck turns slightly to the right providing a sense of movement on which the folds of the skin are rendered above the suggestion of a neck hump (7cm tall). Very fine and scarce.

Laszlo Torok (insert the dotty O's) remarks that the exaggerated features are rendered with express malice in representing the lower strata of Hellenistic Alexandrian society.^