Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/387

Rh from nature, and perhaps after death. M. Gille believed the artist had before him a plaster cast of the deceased taken immediately after death, and when his work was completed, perhaps in the space of one day, the mask was placed over the countenance which grief and respect sought to veil even in the tomb. The edges of the mask are cut off all round, but leaving a sort of frill under the chin, while small holes were made at the margin of the cheeks and above the forehead for the purpose of securing it firmly to the face. As in the mask from Olbia, there are no perforations for the eyes or apertures for the mouth and nostrils. This interment is believed to belong to the third century

Leaving the east of Europe we must now turn to Italy, to the capital of the Roman Empire. Winckelmann refers casually to the terra-cotta mask of a child found in a tomb at Rome; and this perhaps is identical with a child's mask of similar material recorded by Ficorini, who says it came from one of the columbaria near the baths of Caracalla. Further details seem to be wanting. The Antiquarian Society of Zurich possesses two terra-cotta masks from a grave at Cumae, near Naples. Both represent the faces of women with some of the hair brought rather low over the forehead and without showing the ears. The modelling is broadly rendered without much detail. The eyebrows are well marked; but the holes for the eyes are disproportionately large, the upper lip is too short, the mouth far too small for the eyes and face, while the chin is somewhat distorted. Through the hair is passed a ribbon with a tendril of vine-leaves and bunches of grapes. The faces of both masks are coloured with a flesh tint of tender rose; the lips and the edges round the apertures of the eyes are red and the eyebrows black. In one example the hair is yellow, in the other reddish, the tendril of the vine being