Room to Imagine – Art & Antiques Magazine

“Life & Death in the Ancient World” at the Tampa Museum of Art harkens to antiquity for reminders of the power of shared human experiences

By James D. Balestrieri

In the age of the highly focused, thematic museum show, “Life & Death in the Ancient World,” an exhibition with a narrow-beam thesis that aims to shed new light on some aspect of art history—one of several planned long-term shows that draw on the permanent collections at the Tampa Museum of Art—is a reminder of the sort of “cabinet of curiosities” exhibitions that were once common in museums, allowing visitors to view a wide variety of superb objects across cultures and time while remaining within a particular area of study. With objects from across the Mediterranean, dating from 2,300 BCE to early in the Common Era, the exhibition (on display in the museum’s Lemonopoulos Gallery through 2026) is organized according to five themes : 1) daily life—including human and animal figures, everyday ceramics, metal tools and glassware, and portrayals of love and beauty ideals; 2) amusement—including theater and sports, wine production and consumption; 3) death and dying—including funerary vessels and fragments of sarcophagi; 4) religion—including illustrations of myths and rituals; and 5) power and trade—including warfare and seafaring, as well as two coin cabinets.

While it might seem that such an exhibition is relatively simple to mount, its success relies on the beauty of the individual objects and their consequent power to attract and hold the viewer’s interest.  In a word, the array of beauty and power in “Life & Death in the Ancient World” is exquisite.

Likely the oldest piece in the exhibition is the Cycladic Idol, a small marble sculpture, perhaps representative of female beauty, from the Greek island of Keros—one of the Cyclades—that dates to circa 2300 BCE. The work transports us back to the Bronze Age, 1,200 years before the Trojan Wars, to an era and culture we have only begun to fathom. Cycladic figures like this one are not uncommon, but their purpose and meaning are lost to us who live in the 21^st century. Perhaps they are ceremonial—household gods.  Perhaps they are funerary effigies. Perhaps their small size, economy of form, and portability are key attributes. Their formal abstraction has long been admired, studied, copied, and linked with modernist aims, though there is no way to prove any philosophical connection. As art historian André Malraux often reminded us, many aspects of the art of the past look modern, although the impetus to create those works may have been anything but. A truly outstanding example of Cycladic sculpture—such as the one in this exhibition—leads, however, to other questions: Why are the woman’s arms folded? What is the purpose of the absolute symmetry in the carving?  Despite having no discernible physical features, she seems to be alive, looking back at us with a certain judgmental, perhaps even maternal, attitude. Symmetry confers power and suggests disdain, as if she is, in some way, shaming us. You almost want to look away and wonder what you did wrong. These questions, in turn, lead back to the making of the piece: Who carved it? Why? For whom? And why this way? That a work of this simplicity and antiquity can elicit such strong emotions is a testament to its enduring mystery.

Fast-forward to the terracotta Father of Comedy theatrical mask from Syria, created circa 200–100 BCE, worlds away from our time and reality, yet deeply connected to us through our shared humanity and our need to laugh. Stepping back, however, from the object itself, its Syrian provenance is a reminder of the extent and influence of the Hellenistic World—from Spain to India—and of the impact and evolution of Hellenistic culture over centuries, until its displacement by the Roman Republic and Empire. The theater as we know it is one of the great and enduring exports of Ancient Greece—Athens, to be precise. Even though we know quite a bit about the origins of tragedy in Classical Greek political, social, and theological life, we know far less about comedy, other than the notion that its origins appear to be more rural, derived from festivals that upended—at least for a few days—the social order. The earliest comedies satirize—from the Greek “satyr,” meaning drunken, lustful woodland gods—the conventions of society. In such a context, consider this remarkable mask of the Father of Comedy. Bearded, his face lined with age, his nose bulbous with wine, his mouth open in a hearty laugh, he mocks the world’s absurdities and hypocrisies from the vantage point of venerable experience. It is a short distance from this face to Shakespeare’s Falstaff and their many descendants, the jesters who let us know where we stand in the great scheme of things. (Hint: We aren’t as wonderful as we think.) After all that, notice the holes at the top and the edges of the face—holes for leather straps, no doubt, or braided cord—which lead us to the vision of an actor wearing this mask in performance, perhaps Aristophanes’s tremendous comedies, The Birds and Lysistrata, or perhaps in one of the many plays whose names and the awards they won are all that is known to us.

Ceramic mixing vessel (krater) from Attica, Greece, dating to the Classical period (ca. 440–430 BCE), depicting three maenads in procession.
Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection, 1986.075.

Even a very small object, such as the silver coin (“denarius”) from the Roman Republic—circa 90 BCE, depicting Apollo, enwreathed in laurel as head of the nine Muses—tells a story that leads to a meditation on political power. We’re used to coins depicting leaders. Indeed, in the Roman Empire, once it supplanted the Republic, every new emperor would head to the closest mint to make sure his likeness, often deified with laurel, was broadcast throughout the realm. Coins were inexpensive campaign tools, the political buttons, pocket-sized billboards, and social media accounts of the day. In the Republic, however, men were not gods, and so we see Apollo himself on this denarius, and not, say, Augustus as Apollo. Pair this with the small, almost crude terracotta statuette of a gladiator from the Imperial period and you readily appreciate the progression from the smaller and more inward-looking Republic to the martial preoccupations and territorial ambitions of the Empire.

With their striking orange on black (and black on orange) designs, their artistry and insights into scenes from Greek life, history, the arts, and thought, not to mention the sheer fact of their survival, the Attic ceramics in the exhibition and collection—the kraters, amphorae, wine cups, funerary vessels, even a serving plate for fish—take center stage. This art form, in particular, unites the various themes of “Life & Death in the Ancient World,” encompassing food, drink, arts, religion, trade, and death.

Ceramic funerary vessel (volute krater) from Apulia, Italy, dating to the Hellenistic period (ca. 330–320 BCE).
Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William Knight Zewadski, 1986.225

To take the humblest example, the Red-Figure Fish Plate, from Apulia, Italy, which was made during the “Magna Graecia” period of Hellenistic power and features the simple illustration of four distinct species of fish (as well as a hollow in the center of the plate for sauce), speaks to a culture that saw itself as one of abundance and leisure. Other works, the ceramic oil flask (“lekythos”) and ceramic mixing vessel (“calyx krater”) offer insight into the world of women in the ancient world, into their dress, roles, and other aspects of their daily lives. The woman on the oil flask, in mantle and embroidered dress, standing, looks back just as she is about to pour wine. Her attention is diverted, but to what? Has she been called away to do something else, asked to bring another cup? Or has something else entirely caused her to pause? She could be any of us, distracted from the task at hand. It is an utterly human and eternally captivating moment.

The mixing vessel, in which the artist uses the traditional black background to represent the dark of night, is especially remarkable as it reveals a procession of women (“maenads”), at night, performing a ritual to Dionysus, a god we associate with wine and uninhibited behavior; to the Greeks and Romans, he was also the god of fertility and artistic creativity. A woman with a torch leads the way and beckons two others to follow. The second woman plays the lyre, while a third bears a drinking cup and a pinecone, one of the symbols of this very ancient god. Again, we glimpse a moment: the leader with the light looks back, taking care of the others, while the woman with the lyre looks down at her instrument and the third woman looks up, presumably through trees, perhaps at the night sky. This is a hallowed but nonetheless human moment of communion—with the god, yes, but also one in which the women know and play their roles in the ritual, take care of one another, and lose themselves in their own thoughts.

Roman marble sculpture dating to the Imperial period (ca. 150–200 BCE), depicting the Abduc-tion of the Sabine Women.
On loan from the collection of the White Family (Dr. F. Ashley White, Dr. Michele C. White, and Ethan A. White, Esq.), IL.2022.016.001.

In each of these, as in many Attic ceramic works, we have a sense of a moment in time captured, the kind of moment that inspired John Keats to write perhaps his most famous poem, “Ode on A Grecian Urn,” in which the figures, to him, seem caught in an eternal amber, lover chasing lover, piper piping unheard melodies, women proceeding to sylvan altars: “O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede/Of marble men and maidens overwrought… Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought/As doth eternity…”

Bronze bust of Hermes-Thoth, perhaps from Alexandria, Egypt, dating to the Hellenistic period (ca. 3rd–2nd cent. BCE).
Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of Martin and Marianne Weil, 1993.028.001.

Exhibitions like “Life & Death in the Ancient World” play an important and often overlooked role. They introduce us to whole subject areas and aspects of history we may only be dimly aware of, histories we half-know and hardly recall from high school social studies lessons. They awaken our curiosities (curious objects inspiring curiosity), offer myriad avenues for our imaginations, and encourage us to follow our interests down whatever paths to which we are led. Their ultimate aim is to show us what connects us, what makes us all human, no matter the gaps in time and culture. One can visit and revisit such exhibitions, knowing that each visit may guide your eye to something new or to something you didn’t see in quite that way the last time. To paraphrase French literary critic Roland Barthes, “Life & Death in the Ancient World” is the kind of show that gives you, the viewer, room to play and construct, as it were, your own personal, private exhibition, taking clues from the works on display and creating your own stories. It’s the kind of exhibition you end up taking with you wherever you go.