Face Urn (25–50 CE): Art, History and Details

Face Urn (25–50 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This wheel-thrown vase is decorated with humanlike facial features and a phallus applied to the face’s cheek. Wide arching eyebrows meet at the short bridge of the face’s puggy nose, which sits over lips pursed around its protruding tongue. Finger marks can be seen around the eyes and eyebrows where clay was added onto the surface of the vessel to form the facial features.

Object facts

• Title: Face Urn
• Date: 25–50 CE
• Culture: Rhenish (Cologne), Gallo Roman, 2nd quarter, 1st Century
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: reddish ware with gray burnished slip
• Dimensions: Diameter: 19.5 cm (7 11/16 in.); Overall: 19 x 20 cm (7 1/2 x 7 7/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Roman
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1992.125

A detail from the museum

The phallus was often used as a protective symbol in the ancient world.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1992." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (1993): 38-79.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.