Stature of a theater actor; Rome, 2nd century A.D.

Stature of a theater actor; Rome, 2nd century A.D.Bronze.Restoration on the right shoulder.Provenance: Private Collection, France.Measures: 19 x 8 x 7 cm; 20,5 cm (base).Round sculpture made in bronze representing a standing male figure, with crossed legs generating a costrapposto. The man, bearded, brings forward one of his hands with the palm up, revealing a coin. In addition, with his left hand he holds a small bag. As for the face, it seems to have a mask of Silenus, who in Greek mythology represented minor gods of drunkenness, adoptive father, tutor and companion of Dionysus, described as the oldest, wisest and drunkard of his followers. The Bacchic theme is a constant in the history of Western art since Ancient Greece, when this type of scenes used to adorn the vessels used in banquets. The Romans also represented it frequently, in mosaics and other types of artistic manifestations, and although during the Middle Ages it was relegated in favor of the Christian theme, it was taken up again with strength in the Renaissance, with important examples such as Titian's bacchanals. It is also worth mentioning that Dionysus, or Bacchus, was the deity, representative of the theater, so it is not surprising that this exceptional figure represents the values of Greek theater. Perhaps a component of the dithyrambe, a kind of poetry that was recited by a chorus composed only of men, and which is understood as the beginnings of the theater.After the idealization of the Augustan era, the realism of the Flavian era and the subsequent baroque of the second and third centuries, Roman sculpture, marked by the presence of Christianity, tends to dehumanize, to become more ideal and symbolic. The concern for realism was lost, and there was a tendency towards a schematization that sought to capture the ideal, the soul or the divinity, and not the human aspect of the figures. The carving, in correspondence with this new aesthetic, acquires a great hardness, and the figures acquire a noble hieratism.