St. Louis WU
3267
Corinthian Beaked Oinochoe
The Tydeus Painter
Late Corinthian, c. 560-550 B.C.
Lent by the Washington University Gallery of Art; gift of Messers.
Brookings and Parsons, donated after the 1904 World's Fair (WU 3267). Color
Plate 1
The Vase: H. 17.3 cm; W. 12.9 cm;
D. of base 7.8 cm. Intact: much flaking of glaze and added color on handle and
neck; chips on foot; fired red on neck, back of vase, in zone of rays, and on
the horse at the right of the panel. Buff-yellow clay covered with red-orange
slip.
Decoration:
Panel: a large, carefully drawn arrangement of
palmette fan and lotus flower, with voluted tendrils and buds, is flanked,
heraldically, first by facing cocks then by youths on horseback. Each youth
wears a short chiton, carries a spear in the left hand and reins, incised, in
the right. Vertical lines establish the panel, with a large flower bud on each
side, to fill space. The shoulder, separated from the panel by a faint line in
dilute, has a frieze of palmette and lotus. There are tongue-patterns above
this, at the base of the neck, and tongues cover the foot. Underneath the panel
is a net-pattern, with a zone of rays below. At the back of the vase, beneath
the handle, is a broad palmette fan with tendrils ending in volutes. The foot is
set off by a raised fillet; rotelles are at the sides of the three-ribbed
handle. A molded female head is at the base of the handle on the neck and there
is a small spur for a thumb rest on the bottom of the handle.
Added red: central rib and sides of handle, thumb rest,
traces on sides of rotelles, sides of "beak;" tongue-pattern on neck and foot;
dots on calyxes of lotus blossoms; center row of dots in net-pattern; lines
encircling vase (two under picture zone, two under net-pattern, one under
tongues on foot); random patches on chitons of youths and on horses; feathers,
combs and wattles of cocks; dot on tip of lotus bud at the right of panel.
Added white: horses, for manes and "stars" on
forehead; cocks, for chest, neck and tail feathers; woman's face; on the
tongue-pattern, every third element; lotus blossoms, tendrils connecting lotus
and palmettes, palmette fan on the front of the vase and the palmette and
tendrils on the back; staggered dots in the net-pattern frieze. Inner details
for the manes of horses, for the markings of the palmette fans and voluted
tendrils and for the whirligig and star designs on the rotelles are done in
yellow-brown dilute glaze.
This is an important vase, one of the earliest known examples of the
beaked oinochoe. The Washington University oinochoe is also "one of the most
attractive Corinthian vases..." of rare shape which "gives us valuable
information about the toreutic industry of this period" (
Payne 1931, p. 326, no. 1405).
Corinthian clay was originally matt buff and the application of a
red-orange slip here and on the late Corinthian pyxis from the same museum (see
St. Louis WU 3263) shows that the
Corinthian Tydeus Painter, and others like him during the second quarter of the
century, were imitating Athenian pottery and vying with it for popularity in the
export market. The red-ground was an attempt at duplication of the warm natural
red-orange of Athenian clay. The name of the Tydeus Painter comes from a
neck-amphora,
Louvre E 640 (
Payne 1931, no. 1437) which depicts an enigmatic scene
of Tydeus killing Ismene, the former a hero of the Seven against Thebes, the
latter the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta. Despite this painter's attempts at
narrative on some vases, among the painters of the Corinthian red-ground style,
the Tydeus Painter's use of the figure is still decorative. The size and shape
of this very precious and delicate vase, plus the positioning of the mounted
youths here and on a similar oinochoe,
London B
39 (
Payne 1931, no. 1399) show
this to be true. Although the work of contemporary Athenian decorators, that is,
members of the "E" Group, early Exekias, and even some of the work of the Amasis
Painter was coalescing into a confident, increasingly weighty vehicle for
story-telling, this colorful Corinthian style, nonetheless, forced a response
from some Athenian decorators, namely, the painters of the so-called
"Tyrrhenian" amphorae (see
Omaha 1963.480).
A look at the Chalcidian amphora from the University of Minnesota
(see
Minneapolis WF 9) demonstrates the debt
which the artists from Chalcis (or from Chalcidian Italy) owed Corinth and, as
H. R. W. Smith conjectured, to the Tydeus Painter (
H.R.W. Smith 1932, pp. 118-119). The facing cocks,
paratactically arranged around a central floral motif, the Ionian lotus buds
encircling them from behind, were probably copied from Corinth. The
belly-amphora featured by Chalcidian potters was taken from Corinth before the
middle of the century (see
Minneapolis WF 9,
Rumpf 1927, 120).
Several features of decoration and shape, taken together, imply that
the Tydeus Painter and his potter had metal vases in mind as prototypes —
metal vases of a new type, with ribbed handles, mouth, and foot cast and
attached to a "hammered" body (
Payne 1931, pp.
210 ff.). The large palmette design painted in white at the base of
the handle is borrowed from metalwork where the motif, applied in relief, would
have masked the join of the handle to the vase (
Payne 1931, p. 213). The tongue-pattern on the foot
and neck is a popular pattern on metal vases, as one sees on an oinochoe in the
Pomerance collection, c. 530 B.C. (
D. Mitten
and S. Doeringer, Master Bronzes from the Classical
World [Greenwich 1968] no. 77, p. 4, pl. 1). The
rotelles, the applied head (
Payne 1931, no.
883, pl. 48.9), and the shape of the mouth on the St. Louis oinochoe
can be compared to contemporary bronze oinochoe found at Corinth (
Payne 1931, pl. 45 1,2,6.). For
Corinthian bronze figures of horse and rider see
F. Jones, Ancient Art in The Art
Museum, Princeton University (1960) 39. The Terpaulos
Painter's red-figure oinochoe, lent by the same museum, shows the shape as it
was used slightly later in Athens (see
St. Louis WU
3283). The style of the Tydeus Painter is similar to that of the
Andromeda Painter. The development of the Tydeus Painter's career, from more
narrative style to one which is increasingly decorative, has been discussed by
Payne 1931, pp. 109-111). This
oinochoe seems to be a late work of his.
Bibliography
Payne 1931, no. 1405, p.
326;
H.R.W. Smith 1932,
116-119;
G. Mylonas, "Greek Vases
in the Collection of Washington University in St. Louis," AJA 44 (1940) 188, 190-192;
Herbert & Symeonoglou 1973, 4, figs.
1 and 2;
Amyx 1988, p. 269,
Tydeus Painter, no. A-2 with additional bibliography;
Furtwängler, op. cit., pp. 241-242, no. 1 (Letter of Dietrich von
Bothmer to Warren G. Moon, 15 Feb. 1980). For metal prototypes:
D. K. Hill, "The Technique of Greek
Metal Vases and its Bearing on Vase Forms in Metal and Pottery," AJA 51 (1947) 248-256.
W.G.M.
