Warren G. Moon, Greek Vase-Painting in Midwestern Collections

University of Chicago 1967.115.68

Lent by The David and Alfred Smart Gallery, The University of Chicago; received by Professor F. B. Tarbell from Mr. E. P. Warren, 1902 (1967.115.68, formerly UC 340).

The Vase: h. 34.2 cm; d. of mouth 12.3 cm; d. of rim outside 14.3 cm; d. of foot 14.5 cm; max. d. 24.2 cm at about 12.5 cm from the base. Broken and repaired; much pitted, scratched, abraded, with indications of disease, especially along incision marks, some covered with India ink. One large piece, missing from the rim over the Sphinx, is restored with plaster, and on the reverse a triangular piece is missing and restored at Hermes' left knee and shin and through part of his lower right leg. On the obverse there is a dent in the body of the pot at the middle of the Sphinx's column. There is a thickened ridge around the inside of the vase at the level of the lower join of the upper handle-roots. This shows in a mark along the lotus bordering the obverse panel above the Sphinx. The pelike has the torus mouth and spreading foot, the handles segmental in section, the low center of gravity characteristic of the shape. Apart from the picture panels, all is black. Inside, a 2.0 cm band was left reserved around the rim, below which 5.5 cm of black covers the inside of the neck. Below this is a narrow reserved band, apparently darkened with wash, for it is set off from the reserved inner side of the vase itself. Turning marks are visible inside the vase. A narrow band at the base of the foot outside, the underside of the foot, and the underside of the rim are reserved. Tooled grooves articulate the narrow fillet which joins body and foot. A red line is painted around the neck on each side at the point where the upper handle-roots join it, and there are traces of another red line painted about the upper edge of the foot. Two red-painted lines encircle the vase below the picture panels. The glaze is fired a shiny black, going to green in places, especially in the area of the handle A/B, where vertical brush-strokes are visible above the red lines, horizontal ones below them. Red wash, fired very orange, covers all visible reserved areas. Thick black outlines can be seen in places where the black filling the silhouette is thin.

Decoration: The pictures on both sides are framed by a sloppy and uneven chain of dotted, linked lotus-buds above, two vertical rows of unconnected uneven dots at each side, and a reserved band below. The tendrils linking the lotus below cross each other. Side A: On a pedestalled column, a Sphinx sits to right on her haunch (one hind leg, two front legs show). Her head is turned back toward a bearded naked man who is just departing, his walking stick in hand, his himation flung over his left arm and shoulder. He in turn looks back toward the Sphinx and the bearded man standing pensive before her. The latter, draped in himation, leans on his walking stick, his head bowed, his weight on his left foot. Traces of white remain on the Sphinx's face and neck; there were raised dots of paint to indicate curls at the back of her head but only chipped areas remain. Short, vertical, incision marks across the heads of the Sphinx and the man at left: are they strands of hair or wreaths? Side B: Hermes, hatted, booted, swathed about the hips, walks to right playing the double pipes, a flute-case made of skin hanging from his left arm. A sword hangs at his left side from a red-painted strap across his chest; white paint was used for the scabbard end. Yellowish-white paint covered the crown of his hat. His hair is tied up at the back in a loop. Two satyrs dance wildly about him, the one at left twisting all the way around so that while his near leg is forward, his torso is in frontal view; the satyrs' tails end in three large fringes each. Over the shoulder and down the chest of each satyr hangs one long rectangular tress of hair. On the satyr at left, a curious projection at his armpit in thin glaze, much like the tail fringes, should be a strand of hair flying out from the back of his head-hair shown at the armpit would be, I think, unprecedented.

Fingers against the reserved background, and tail fringes, are done in thinned glaze. The top and bottom edges at the front of Hermes' hatbrim are outlined with incision. On the obverse, relief lines were used to outline part of the staff of the left-hand figure above his shoulder, and the staff of the right-hand figure from the drapery around his waist to the bottom of the column pedestal. Incision outlines the upper leg of the latter where the staff crosses it. Graffiti on the underside of the foot: on the slope from the resting surface, ΣΤΑΛΗΚ; on the center base,

The surge of creative activity in the last quarter of the sixth century brought forth a number of new shapes after the introduction of the red-figure technique, among them the pelike. It is an endearing sort of big-bottomed amphora, a two-handled jar for wine or oil, first made experimentally, it would seem, with an articulated neck (cf. University of Chicago 1967.115.1). Although it looks to have been made in one piece, the ridge inside around the level of the upper handle-roots on the Chicago pelike seems to indicate a join. The Chicago vase is not unique in this respect — the thickened ridge is present in many red-figure pelikai.

Not all, but many black-figure pelikai were decorated by painters of, or painters connected with, the Leagros Group, to which belong the black-figure vases, including the pelikai, of the Eucharides Painter's teacher, the Nikoxenos Painter. The Eucharides Painter, primarily a red-figure artist, is called after a kalos-name which occurs certainly on only two vases, both by him. His black-figure work is so close in style to that of his teacher that, but for the disparate styles of their red-figure work, Beazley would have considered the painters as one (ABV, 395). Note particularly the drawing of the deep and angular breasts, the concave line of the hip-bones, the drapery drawn horizontally across the bodies. A neat solution to this problem of differences and similarities has been posed by the suggestion that the Eucharides Painter, a better artist in red-figure than his teacher, eventually might have taken over that side of their production, while the black-figure work now attributed to him might instead be the later work of the Nikoxenos Painter (M. Robertson, AJA 66 [1962] 312). That the black-figure pelikai of the Nikoxenos Painter have no consistent pattern of subsidiary decoration, while those attributed to the Eucharides Painter do (cf. von Bothmer 1951, p. 46), is no grave encumbrance to this theory: in his earlier work the Nikoxenos Painter experiments, in his later work he fixes on one scheme-the lotus-bud, dot-net, and reserved line of the Chicago pelike—to border his pelikai pictures. On red-figure pelikai this same system of subsidiary decoration is characteristic of those of Myson (a contemporary of the Eucharides Painter) and his followers, the Mannerists. Few other red-figure artists use it on pelikai. The Eucharides Painter himself did not frame the pictures on the two red-figure pelikai attributed to him.

The painter chose interesting subjects for the pictures on his black-figure pelikai: a shoemaker, the sale of oil, the capture of Silenos. One, like the Chicago vase, shows Hermes playing the flute, but to a satyr and a goat. A man (with satyrs) on the reverse of the shoemaker scene might have been meant for Hermes, too. Hermes was a popular figure in Greek vase-painting at the end of the sixth century and the beginning of the fifth, appearing often with other gods, with heroes, and with satyrs. Among his other functions and activities he was sacred to shepherds and was supposed to have invented the pipes. He does not usually sport a sword, but the hat, short drape, and boots are his. The long tongues of these boots are sometimes taken as wings, but they also appear on boots worn by Hermes which have wings attached at the backs. Two huntsmen on one of the Eucharides Painter's black-figure pelikai (ABV, 396, no. 24) both wear boots with long tongues; neither need be, and both cannot be, Hermes. Beazley called the tongues handles for pulling on boots (JHS 28 [1908] 314). The scene on the obverse, visitors to the Sphinx, occurs on red-figure as well as black-figure vases. The Sphinx, a lion-bodied creature with woman's head, eagle's wings, and serpent's tail, came to Greece by way of the East and was early carved on tombstones as guardian. It also figures prominently in the story of Oedipus, so we may see here visitors at a tomb, visitors to an actual Sphinx, or Oedipus confronting the Sphinx of Thebes.

One interpretation sees the obverse and reverse pictures of this vase related by the mysteries of life and death, joy and gloom, and by Hermes' dual functions as god of pastoral pleasure, and chaperone to the underworld (Price, infra).

There is an interesting black-figure pelike by the Theseus Painter at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia 61.2. For the thickened ridge inside a red-figure pelike by the Eucharides Painter, see K. Stähler, Eine Unbekannte Pelike des Eucharidesmalers im Archä ologischen Museum der Universität Münster (Cologne 1967) 2; for the ubiquitous figure of the draped man leaning on his walking stick (the "onlooker")' Haspels 1936, 151; the Sphinx with visitors, Haspels 1936, 130, no. 3; black-figure pelikai, von Bothmer 1951, 40 to 47; the Eucharides Painter and the Nikoxenos Painter, J. D. Beazley in BSA 18 (1911-1912) 217-233 and BSA 19(1912-1913) 229-247; Hermes, Zanker 1965, especially p. 117; the Sphinx, Heinz Demisch, Die Sphinx. Geschichte ihrer Darstellung von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart 1977).¹

Bibliography

Louise Berge