Orpheus is not my favourite personality in Greek mythology (bit of a wimp actually, not adequately rescuing Eurydice from Hades, disrespecting Dionysos, etc), but this fragmentary white-ground cup is an absolute stunner, and who doesn’t love a homicidal maenad. White-ground is a technique usually reserved for Athenian lekythoi – those cylindrical vessels generally associated with
On this big bulging pelike, Herakles strikes again! The action man, his lion’s skin and club are this time in Egypt. It’s a heroic vignette known almost exclusively from Athenian red-figure vase painting and goes something like this: our Greek hero finds himself in Egypt, shackled and about to be sacrificed by Busiris (a shadowy
She is not necessarily my favourite of the Athenian Akropolis korai (I tend to prefer her jollier sisters), and sometimes referred to as “sullen”, but her more solemn beauty is important in so many ways. While her format (standing, draped maiden) is familiar from the decades long tradition of glorious sculpted maidens erected on the
Mykonos might readily bring to mind Super Paradise Beach and a debauched party scene, but the island’s real treasure is this enormous vase, extraordinary by every metric, most immediately visible being size at nearly 1.5 meters tall. Dating to the 8th century B.C. the pithos is decorated entirely in relief, and what is shown is
These are three of the seven masks found during Heinrich Schliemann’s famous late 19th century excavations of Mycenae. They were found over the faces of men (and a boy child) in shaft graves within the grave circles in that wondrously fortified citadel, and clearly marked out the individuals buried with them as men of significant
I begin to sing of Demeter, the holy goddess with the beautiful hair […] she of the golden double-axe, she who glories in the harvest.’ So begins Hesiod in his Hymn to Demeter, and I cannot seem to put it out of my mind when faced with this spectacle: a life-sized (30 cm tall, in
The lekythos in Classical Athens was a most unusual vase shape, and this white-ground example is really quite special. Unlike so many other vase types, lekythoi were wholly unrelated to the symposium and wine-consuming, and instead were made specially with a carinated inner lip for precision-pouring during libations. Their cylindrical bodies and near vertical walls
Owl skyphoi – those rough and ready cups produced in great quantities in 5th century Athens and imitated widely in Southern Italy – are always pretty great. Normally Athena’s companion animal, the owl, is shown between two olive springs, turning to peer at the viewer. That format is fun, and a easily recognizable visual synecdoche
Extreme in all his appetites, Herakles is shown on this superb white ground lekythos at the Met, a vase so clever in its ambiguity. On this small lekythos the hero has climbed upon a tenuous platform upon which an altar sits. He crouches over, his lion skin hood bristling above him, and brandishes two spits
For much of its ancient Greece was a ‘Thalassocracy’ – its settlements clustered close to the coast and inhabitants living and dying by the sea’s bounty and inherent dangers. It is difficult to fully comprehend how the Mediterranean determined daily habits and religion, drove innovation and warfare, and facilitated migration and trade. The behaviors and
Genius both in technical mastery and narrative flair, this big skyphos at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is a stunner and shows Makron, the best of the fifth century Athenian cup painters, at the top of his game. The choice of vase shape is unusual for the Makron (normally he went for the elegant, shallow
With sinuous, scaly neck, ears on high alert, raptor-beak, and that glorious tongue, you can practically imagine this griffin screaming… This bronze (now in the British Museum) is in the shape of an especially fierce griffin, the forepart of a mythical beast with Eastern origins. But while this is an especially fine example (and BIG
Ever wonder why the nose-pieces of Greek helmets are sometimes snapped off or bent out of shape? Nose guards on Corinthian helmets don’t bend easily…they tend to be thicker than the rest of the helmet, to protect that delicate cartilaginous protrusion beneath, and when they are bent and missing it’s no accident and nothing to
The weather is warming up, and this delightful (and really quite unusual) amphora at the Villa Giulia seems somehow appropriate. Anyone for a little skinny-dipping? At the centre of the scene is a squared-off man-made structure, evidently some sort of fountain environment, further evidenced by two animal-head shaped spouts at the extreme right and left.
Whether they are shown as stiff little adults or more realistically, children in ancient art (especially in funerary art) are a tricky thing for us modern viewers. Somehow there is an immediate, visceral awareness that they have long since passed away – obvious, but not always such a gut-punch when looking at their grown-up counterparts.
Deep in the Peloponnesian wilderness, high on a mountainous crag at Bassai, is a wild and wonky temple. Iktinos, who had played a major role in the design of the Parthenon some decades before, gave himself free reign here, combining Doric and Ionic architectural traditions and introducing (perhaps) the first Corinthian capital. The construction took
Women in Classical Athens had a notoriously sheltered life, likely rarely leaving the home unaccompanied. An important exception was the extensive (but not terribly well understood) calendar of all-female festivals. Our understanding of these festivals are problematic, hampered by the surviving evidence: literary and artistic descriptions made by men, who would have had little first-hand
I have a special fondness for satyrs, those horny, irrepressible drunkards unbound by mortal conventions. But maenads, the female followers of Dionysos, also abound in Greek art and are no less fascinating… This cup is one of the great masterpieces attributed to the Brygos Painter (made in Athens, found in Vulci, now in Munich), with
All hail, Hera, the queen of the Olympian gods, long-suffering (and occasionally vengeful) wife of Zeus, revered throughout the Greek world. Found in Olympia by the German excavation team in the late 19th century at the Temple of Hera there, this is a colossal (52 cm tall – double life sized) early Archaic head, dating
This is special little bronze (H. 7.1 cm): a very early and spatially sophisticated representation of a seated man. It hails from the Geometric period in Greece (mid-8th century B.C.), likely from a Peloponnesian workshop, and has been with the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore since the 1920’s. Although at first glance it is simple
To me, this is perhaps the most poignant scene in all of Greek vase painting – and there are thousands of incredible representations to choose from. It is the interior of a large drinking cup, executed in the red-figure technique by one of the greats: the Brygos Painter (attributed) and now at the Getty. Lying
The psychedelic arrangement of those whirling colored crescents might first attract the eye, but the miniature scenes above them really hold the gaze. It might just be the perfect vase, and so small it can fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. Aryballoi such as this one were specially designed for holding oil and
What exuberance! This pelike in Boston (attributed to master painter Euphronios or a young and equally innovative Euthymides) is a gem. One side shows two nude youths jumping to the accompaniment of an aulos player. They are in near perfect unison, bodies frontal, heads tuned towards the musician, impressively far off the ground, with legs
The colossal kouros of Samos is remarkable in many ways – it’s sheer size (nearly 5.3 meters tall), relatively recent date of discovery (body in 1980 and head in 1984), the benign ‘archaic smile’ on his lips, and the soft quality of his flesh – a counterpoint to the almost architecturally structured kouroi of mainland
Mimesis on my mind, and gravitating towards bronze today. If the artistic reproduction of reality was the goal, bronze was king, and it had been since atleast the Early Classical period. Life sized bronzes do not survive in great quantities (when they do they are spectacular), but literary evidence indicates that the most acclaimed of
This black-figure cup at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore shows combat between two warriors has a very special shape: it is a mastoid skyphos, taking its name from the Greek word ‘mastos’ (breast). It was a shape popular only for a few decades in the second half of the 6th century B.C. Almost impossibly
With all the beautiful bodies to ogle, it is easy to overlook the extraordinary representations of animals from Classical Athens (and beyond). It is absolutely clear that ancient Greeks had far more intimate appreciation of animals than most of us do today. I’m showing this old stalwart, the over life-sized head of a spirited horse
Captured in the interior of this large drinking cup is the very moment when Achilles and Penthesilea (the Amazon queen) meet on the battlefield at Troy. They fall in love, tragically, just as Achilles fatally stabs her. This representation is special on all sorts of levels, but primarily because of the way the painter has
The idea of the ‘thanatos kalos’, the ‘beautiful death’, was a crucial part of the Ancient Greek world view, and specifically referred to the death of a warrior on the battlefield at the absolute pinnacle of his vigor, strength and endurance (physical and mental). This type of death meant the corpse retained elements of this
“Like lentils rolling in flour!” – how the excavator of the famous pebble mosaics at Pella described their dire state of conservation upon their discovery in the late 1950’s. A vivid image, and an indication of the challenging restoration and consolidation in store for them. Pella was the traditional capital of ancient Macedonia, and the
The early Greek colonists of Sicily were horse-mad and temple-crazy, and conspicuous consumption on took its most grandiose form on the numerous Doric temples they erected. Selinus (modern Selinunte) was the the western most of the Greek colonies, founded in the second half of the 7th century B.C., spread across two craggy hills over-looking the
I do love it when an artwork speaks in the first person! An inscription in Greek running up and down this statuette’s magnificent thighs, proclaims:“Mantiklos donated me as a tithe to the far shooter, the bearer of the Silver Bow. You, Phoibos (Apollo) give something pleasing in return.” Stylistically, the bronze is on the cusp
Miniature, but delectable! This is a rare survival of chryselephantine (gold and ivory) sculpture from the Hellenistic world, and is a tantalizing glimpse into the level of luxury that was available to the elite. Here, a komos (the tipsy procession after the symposium) is shown. A young satyr leads the trio playing the aulos (a
A famous passage in Herodotus describes Greek warriors as ‘men of bronze’ rising from the sea. Evocative and certainly describing the hoplites of his time, sheathed in gleaming metal. Was there anything more personal than armor to a man of fighting age? Not only was it protective, but also obscenely expensive (that’s a lot of
The idea of the ‘thanatos kalos’, the ‘beautiful death’, was a crucial part of the Ancient Greek world view, and specifically referred to the death of a warrior on the battlefield at the absolute pinnacle of his vigor, strength and endurance (physical and mental). This type of death meant the corpse retained elements of this
One of Hera’s epithets was “leukolenos,” or “white-limbed” and I find it delectably appropriate for this metope from Temple E at Selinunte in Sicily. Magna Graecia was flush with natural resources, but good quality white marble was not one of them. Faced with this dearth of raw materials, acrolithic sculpture (meaning composite, with marble combined
Agamemnon returned home, victorious from Troy, to his wife Clytemnestra. Unbeknownst to him, she had been stewing for the last decade (not happy with him for sacrificing their daughter for favorable winds to Troy, or bringing home his concubine) and took a lover while plotting revenge. The ambush Clytemnaestra had in store for her husband