Laughter in Ancient Rome
“This painting—which we now take for granted as an image of a laughing man—raises the question of how confidently we can identify laughter in the art of the past. FIGURE 2. Mosaic—“Beware of the dog”—from the House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii (first century CE). How can we decide if this image was intended to make visitors laugh? FIGURE 3. Bronze statuette of an actor with an ape’s head (Roman date). This nicely symbolizes the overlap between the mimicry of actor and of monkey. ... FIGURE 4. A boy with a performing monkey, from an original painting (first century CE) in the House of the Dioscuri, Pompeii. The ape becomes an actor. FIGURE 5. Parody of Aeneas, escaping from Troy, with his father and son—with ape heads (from an original painting, first century CE, from Pompeii). FIGURE 6. Rembrandt’s self-portrait as Zeuxis (c. 1668).MoreLess
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