Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Thalia.
The gallery
Thalia, Muse of Comedy
Jean-Marc Nattier, 1739
In this Rococo allegory the French court portraitist Jean-Marc Nattier presents Thalia, the Muse of comedy and pastoral poetry, as a smiling young woman crowned with an ivy wreath and holding the grinning comic mask that is her defining attribute. The mask and the lighthearted, idyllic mood announce her domain over comedy and bucolic song, distinguishing her from her tragic sister Melpomene; the picture belongs to the eighteenth-century vogue for portraying living sitters in the guise of the nine Muses.
Statue of Thalia, Muse of Comedy (from the Villa of Cassius at Tivoli)
Unknown Roman sculptor (Hadrianic period), AD 117–138
This Roman marble of the Hadrianic period, unearthed at the Villa of Cassius near Tivoli and now in the Vatican Museums, depicts Thalia as the Muse of comedy. She is identified by the comic mask she carries and by the pastoral shepherd's crook associated with her patronage of idyllic and bucolic poetry. The figure once belonged to a sculptural ensemble of the nine Muses, a favourite theme for adorning aristocratic Roman villas.
Thalia on the Muses sarcophagus (Louvre Ma 475)
Unknown Roman sculptor, 2nd century AD
A relief detail from a Roman sarcophagus carved with the nine Muses, now in the Musée du Louvre (Ma 475), showing Thalia among her sisters. As Muse of comedy she holds the comic theatrical mask, her standard attribute, alongside the shepherd's staff that marks her dominion over pastoral poetry. Such Muse sarcophagi expressed the deceased's claim to learning and culture, ranging the whole sisterhood of the arts across the casket's front.