Tour B: Childhood in Antiquity
What role did children play in ancient societies? How did their world relate to that of adults? And how were children – in their physical development and at different ages – depicted in ancient artworks? The tour sets out in search of ancient realities and representations of childhood.
B2 The Playful Toddler
[IKA, Photo: Kristina Klein]
Inv.-Nr. 1392
Sog. Ganswürger
München, Glyptothek 268
römische Kopie nach einem Original aus der zweiten Hälfte des 3. Jh. v. Chr.
What is happening in this sculpture? Is the boy cuddling the goose or strangling it? This cast represents a well-known marble statue group, now in the Louvre, which is one of several similar compositions that depict a toddler with a goose.
The existence of several similar statue groups made in marble in the Roman period suggests that there may originally have been a famous prototype that was copied widely for wealthy patrons. This may have been a statue mentioned by Pliny (NH 34.84) made by the famous sculptor Boethos of Chalkedon. Pliny himself seems to have been a bit perplexed by the statue, describing it “an infant strangling the goose in the act of embracing it”.
Does this statue represent cruelty, affection, or humour – or indeed a combination of these different emotions? The choice of an infant to explore this emotional ambiguity is typical for art of the Hellenistic period, which saw a dramatic increase in the number of range of portrayals of the human body in comparison to the Classical period. It is in the Hellenistic period that we find more realistic depictions not just of children, but also of old people, and those with ‘ugly’ features (if you look at the room with portrait busts downstairs, you can see some of these).
The type of child portrayed here is the ‘putto-putto’ figure – a chubby, naked, very young male child, usually at the border between childhood and infancy. Such figures later became popular as the cherubs or the cupids of Baroque art.