Masks on Gnathia Vases

Abstract

The following list contains all the masks on Gnathia vases which I have seen or know from illustrations or photographs. I have added (nos. 37–44) Gnathia pictures of actors wearing masks, but I have not included either the Würzburg fragment with a tragic scene or the Leningrad kalyx krater with the prologue of the Eumenides because in both, though the painter may be influenced by the masks worn, he is painting characters rather than actors. I have also excluded satyrs because here again the boundary between character and actor is not clear to me. The list is divided into hanging masks (1–36) and worn masks (37–44). All the actors except the tragic actors belong to the so-called ‘Phlyakes’ known from a large number of South Italian vases of different manufactures, which are decorated with scenes sometimes inspired by Attic Middle Comedy. There is a case for interpreting the hanging masks also as stage masks since the hanging tragic masks (3–5a) are certainly stage masks and the mask of the old man on the London krater (7) is very like a terracotta actor in Oxford; the mask on the Haileybury krater recurs on an Attic relief.