Cincinnati
1959.1
Attic Black-Figure Amphora (Type B)
The Swing Painter
ca. 540 B.C.
(Not exhibited) the Cincinnati Art Museum; Museum purchase (1959.1).
The Vase: H. 49.5 cm; D. of mouth
20.3 cm; W. 34.4 cm. Complete; mended from a few large fragments; glaze damage
on handle B/A and to the foot on same side; minor surface abrasion elsewhere.
Standard mid-sixth-century type with flaring mouth, round handles, and inverted
echinus foot. Above panel on Side A, lotus-palmette frieze; on Side B,
simplified lotus-palmette frieze in which the lotuses preserve a semi-bud form
with a smooth, rounded base. Dilute-glaze lines at sides and bottom of panels.
At base, rays. Three bands in added red on neck, two just below panels, two
above rays, and one on foot.
Decoration:
Side A: Herakles and Busiris. Herakles,
dressed in a short chiton and the skin of the Nemean Lion, with a quiver hanging
at his waist, strides to the right, holding one Egyptian priest upside-down by
the ankle and grasping another by the neck. Before him the Egyptian king
Busiris, already slain, lies slumped over an altar, apparently made of bricks
and decorated with rosettes. Three other Egyptians flee at right and left,
looking back in alarm. Between the legs of the one at left, there is a small
stool. In the field, at upper right, a nonsense inscription.
Side B: youth setting out between two draped men and two
warriors. The warrior at left wears a fawn-skin
(nebris) over his chiton and is armed with a helmet, greaves, and a
shield; the one at right has only a shield. The youth in the center wears
crossed baldrics for a quiver or sword, but neither piece of equipment is
visible. As Cedric Boulter has suggested (
Boulter 1966, p. 6), this scene may represent warriors arming.
Added red: A, calyxes of lotuses;
hair, beards, and stripes in garments of some Egyptians; fillet of elderly
Egyptian at right; chiton and quiver of Herakles; cores of rosettes on altar. B,
central leaves on palmettes; hair of youth and that of warrior at right; stripes
in mantles and in chiton skirt of youth; chiton, fillet, and greaves of warrior
at left; skirt and dots on bodice of chiton worn by warrior at right.
Added white: A, claws and teeth of lion's
skin; robes of two Egyptians; hair, necklace, and knife-handle of another;
various small dots on altar and clothing. B, blazons on shields; base of
helmet-crest and spots on
nebris of warrior at
left; crossed baldrics of youth; dot-rosettes on clothing.
The Cincinnati amphora is a true masterpiece of the Attic
black-figure technique; in addition, the main scene on this vase is one of the
earliest depictions of the rather uncommon theme of Herakles and Busiris. Thus
it seems essential that we discuss the vase in the catalogue even though its
condition has prevented its inclusion in the exhibition.
The myth of Herakles and Busiris, which takes place in Egypt, appears
in Greece first in vase-painting (mid-sixth century B.C.), then (about a century
later) in literature, with Herodotus (
Hdt. 11.45), who thought the tale impious and foolish.
But his kinsman and contemporary, Panyassis, the epic poet, is quoted by
Seleukos the grammarian as having described "human sacrifice in Egypt" (F 26
Kinkel). There is something brilliantly comical about the Swing Painter's
conception, about his vengeful, hulking Herakles, who by sheer brute force,
wielding an Egyptian as a human club, manages to worst the entire company,
including the pharaoh, Busiris. E. H. Gombrich has written of this
representation, "There is little doubt that this humorous account of Herakles'
exploits among the Egyptians was inspired by Egyptian renderings of some
victorious campaign ... (one of) the many pictorial chronicles that shows a
gigantic figure of Pharaoh confronting an enemy stronghold with its pygmy
defenders begging for mercy, which the Greeks had seen" (
Gombrich 1961, 135). At some point Greek mythographers
interpreted the Egyptian topos as a familiar idiom, making this adventure an
early part (like the battle against Antaios) of Herakles' last labor, "the quest
for the Golden Apples of the Hesperides."
Egypt has been plagued by drought, and its pharaoh Busiris, desperate
for a solution, consults a seer, Phrasios of Cyprus, who tells him that the
first stranger in his land should be sacrificed to Zeus. The remedy may have
been effective, but the cure proved worse than the disease. With little interest
in tourism, Busiris, in order to insure continued protection from the gods,
victimizes every foreigner who journeys to Egypt. Herakles the eternal, now the
international defender, could not tolerate such inhospitable behavior; the
rights and safety of travelers were sacred to Zeus Paraxenos. The hero feigns
surrender to the Egyptians and relinquishes his accustomed weapons, the club and
bow. Just as he is about to be sacrificed, Herakles turns the tables and at
least in the Swing Painter's representation, has the pharaoh sacrificed on the
altar in his stead.
As Boulter has pointed out (
Boulter
1966, p. 3), the Swing Painter was wise to choose a one-piece amphora
for such a vigorous, action-packed scene. Traditionally, this type of amphora
has separate, framed picture-zones and is largely black, the dark-ground forming
a contrast to the light-red panels. These features, as well as the unity of the
form of the vase — the neck and body are made together in one motion of
the potter's hands — provide not only scale but increased dramatic power.
By comparison, a black-figure neck amphora, (see
Moon 1979, no. 56), where the neck is made separately
from the body and the surface of the vase is primarily red, does not usually
work to the same narrative advantage. The black figures on a neck-amphora appear
thinner, less substantial, and more ornamental simply because they are not the
same color as the field and because the picture-zone is not framed. It took
Exekias to break the limitations of the neck-amphora in terms of narrative power
in his famous example in the British Museum, London B210, which shows Achilles
killing the Amazon queen Penthesilea (
ABV,
144, no. 7).
The Swing Painter seems to have preferred to decorate amphorae of
type B, although his hand is evident on a large number of neck-amphorae. His
name-vase in Boston, which shows a girl seated on a swing, is a type B amphora
(
ABV, 306, no. 41). "This is a
large and comical group," wrote Beazley of the Swing Painter. "Those who tire of
the symmetry, sobriety, and normality of Group E," he added, "will like the
looser composition of the Swinger, his haphazard anatomy, quaint touches, and
unusual subjects" (
BSA 32 [1931-32] 12). Though the painter has given his
Egyptians uncommon details of physiognomy, such as high foreheads, curly hair,
and white eyebrows, he has not made their features negroid, like those of the
priests in a version of the myth on a pelike in Athens by the Pan Painter (
ARV2, 554, no. 82). The composition of
the Swing Painter's scene of Herakles and Busiris may, at first glance, seem
informal, but it is strictly organized, having a central focus with
design-elements paired antiphonally around this axis. For example, the outermost
figures with daggers adopt the same pose: they run away but look back. On either
side of the king and hero, there is a priest, each with a seemingly weightless
body, each wearing a white tunic of similar length. In terms of anatomy, the
painter may have rendered the calf of Herakles' right leg somewhat awkwardly,
but, nonetheless, he has given the hero a most convincing death-grip on one
Egyptian's neck.
For his representation of the Busiris myth, the Swing Painter appears
to have borrowed and adapted some essential elements from the traditional
iconography employed by Attic vase-painters to depict the death of Priam.
Black-figure artists normally portray Priam, the elderly king of Troy, stretched
out over an altar, either already slain or begging for mercy from his assailant,
Achilles' vengeful son, Neoptolemos. The two versions of the scene are
exemplified, respectively, on an amphora of type B in Bonn by the Princeton
Painter, the Swing Painter's master (
ABV, 299,
no. 1), and on a neck-amphora in the Louvre by a contemporary of the
Swing Painter, the Bucci Painter (
Louvre F
222; see
Para., 137, no. 7 bis,
ex-
ABV, p. 316, Class of Cambridge 49, no.
4). On the amphora in Cincinnati, the pharaoh Busiris lies slain upon
an altar in much the same manner as King Priam on the Bonn amphora. Many
black-figure representations of the story of Priam, moreover, show Neoptolemos
wielding the body of Astyanax, Hektor's young son and Priam's grandson, as a
weapon. This gruesome touch, which is not part of the literary account of the
legend, comes from the narrative of the death of Astyanax by Lesches (
The Little Iliad,
Par. 14), according to which Neoptolemos seized the child by his foot
and hurled him from the walls of Troy. A vivid portrayal of Neoptolemos
threatening King Priam with the body of Astyanax appears on the Bucci Painter's
neck-amphora in the Louvre. Very much the same motif is employed by the Swing
Painter to portray Herakles on the Cincinnati amphora. Having already dispatched
Busiris, the hero has grasped one of his victim's priests by the ankle and
prepares to use him as a club against another, whom he has seized by the throat.
This particular treatment of the myth seems to be unique to the Swing Painter.
Two similar depictions do exist, one on a Caeretan hydria in Vienna, dated ca.
530 B.C., the other on the pelike in Athens, of ca. 470, by the Pan Painter (
supra). On both of these vases, Herakles is
using an Egyptian as a human club, but Busiris is not present.
Bibliography
D. von Bothmer, AJA 61 (1957) 105;
AQ 22 (1959) 272, center,
2;
Boulter 1966;
Para., 134, no. 23
ter.;
Brommer 1973, 34, A, no. 2;
Boardman 1974, fig. 143.
Evelyn Bell, Warren G. Moon
