[German version]

According to Pliny (HN 35,114), the name for caricature depictions in painting since Antiphilus [4] of Alexandria represented a certain Gryllus in that way. Originally these were dancers with grotesque physical proportions and contortions. As gryllographeîn and grylloeídēs later generally referred to ridiculously proportioned bodies, small-format free-standing sculpture representations can also be described as grylloi. Today the genre is no longer attributed to Alexandrian art only. To cover all animal caricatures and monstrous figur…