Head of a Man (Main View, front)

This head of a young man has a rounded cranium, full cheeks, and a heavy chin forming a squarish face, which is framed by tightly coiled locks of hair across his low forehead and temples. He has a broad nose and fleshy lips. Asymmetrical eyes and a crease on the proper right side of the neck indicate that the model for this head was angled slightly to the right. No traces of polychrome pigments remain to indicate his complexion or hair color. Broken off a statue at the base of the neck, the head lacks hair on the sides and back, a summary treatment typical of mass-produced votive sculptures that were intended to be seen from the front.

The votive is one of a group of twenty terracotta heads and busts (inv. 82.AD.93.1–20)  reportedly associated with an extraurban sanctuary at Saturo/Satyrion near Taranto (ancient Taras/Tarentum). Between the fifth and third centuries B.C., worshippers dedicated thousands of ex-votos at shrines by a sacred spring as well as in precincts around the city. Many figures of women, men, and children reproduce standard types, but display individualized physiognomies, expressions, and attributes. The youth’s cropped hair and serious demeanor reflect a Greek artistic tradition established in the fifth century B.C. for sculptures of idealized athletes. His dense curls and thick lips, however, may identify him as a Black African or member of another non-Greek ethnic group.

Most striking are the youth’s powerful neck and swollen left ear, which has an enlarged lobe and lacks internal modeling. This trait occurs frequently on images of boxers, whose participation in arena fights resulted in telltale “cauliflower ears.” Sports played a dominant role in lifestyles, religious ceremonies, and funerary rituals of the Greek colonies of southern Italy. African athletes, who practiced ancient traditions of combat sports, probably took part in local events. At Paestum, for example, more than twenty fourth- and third-century B.C. Lucanian tomb paintings illustrate boxing matches sponsored during funeral games. Several show bouts staged between opponents who appear to be African and Italic. Accompanied by a musician, these represent gladiatorial contests or burlesque fights reenacted by masked actors.

Close commercial and cultural ties with Alexandria and Carthage encouraged the popularity of genre figures depicting Black Africans in southern Italian and Sicilian sanctuaries and tombs. Known to the Greeks as “Aethiopians” inhabiting the region south of Egypt, they were familiar as soldiers, acrobats, theater performers, and domestic slaves. Like a number of the Saturo votives, votive masks of African men and women are related to the cult of Dionysos, patron god of theater.

Further reading:
Adapted from L. Ferruzza, Ancient Terracottas from South Italy and Sicily in the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2016, cat. 6. For further discussion of the martial arts in Magna Graecia, see L. Masiello, “Il pugilato,” in Atleti e guerrieri. Tradizioni aristocratici a Taranto tra il VI e il V sec. a.C. Catalogo del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Taranto, vol. I, 3, 1994, pp. 104–09. Boxing matches in Lucanian tomb painting: A. Potrandolfo, A. Rouveret, and M. Cipriani, Le tombe dipinte di Paestum, 1998, pp. 54–55. On the presence of Africans in ancient art and theater, see F. M. Snowden, Jr., “Iconographical Evidence of the Black Populations in Greco-Roman Antiquity,” in David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (eds.), The Image of the Black in Western Art, 1, From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire, 2010, pp. 133–245.