‘Dread-yelping’ has to be my favorite ancient epithet (or translation of one). That’s how Homer describes Skylla, one of the nasties that heroic Odysseus encountered on his circuitous journey home from Troy. She lurked in a cave along the Straits of Messina (still a treacherous seeming waterway between Sicily and the mainland), tempting sailors with
Everything is wrong with this picture! Rather than a draped symposiast, a nude woman reclines (spayed rather unbecomingly) on a striped pillow, her uplifted index finger hooked into the handle of an enormous skyphos (quite a different type of drinking cup than the shallow kylix this image decorates). She is apparently attempting ‘kottabos’, one of
Party tricks and drinking games on drinking cups continue to amuse and delight me as they surely did an ancient audience. This gentleman is deep into an evening of carousing as he shows off to his companions, balancing on his left hand and right foot while bringing his left leg up and over and managing
This unusual little aryballos (a vase for scented oil) was deposited near the temple of Apollo at Corinth in the early 6th century B.C. The inscription running jaggedly around its body reads ‘Pyrvias leading the dance / to him an olpa’, which is usually interpreted as referencing (and illustrating) competitive dance that might have taken
File away the interior of this famous silver cup under ‘cool things to find at the bottom of your wineglass’…because while it is a masterpiece of late Hellenistic silver work, 1st century aegyptomania and perhaps even dynastic propaganda, at its core (if you allow me to be even more banal than usual) it is very
Faience is a lovely thing – a type of non-clay ceramic composed mostly of silica, it could be fired with this appealing turquoise glaze and was a specialty of Egyptian artisans used widely for thousands of years there. This vase is Greek in shape (it’s an oinochoe, the spout of which is missing) and of
Hailing from the wilds of 8th century Boeotia, meet my new favorite centaur, with all of the confused mingling of equine and human body parts one would hope for. Shown is just a section of the shoulder of the big Theban amphora it decorated. I like in particular how experimental the earlier artists were in
Couldn’t tear myself away from watching the macabre spectacle in the frigid swamp of D.C. just now, which made me think this was a sort of appropriately depressing artwork for the day. It’s a white ground lekythos, one of the specialized vases with almost exclusively funerary overtones and typically matching imagery. This scene is hard
Beautiful and terrible, this fragment is a standout in every way. It is the preserved part of a large cup’s interior, and the dramatic arc of the woman’s shoulders would have followed the contours of circular tondo. She is a wonder, with the fine pleats of her chiton simultaneously swinging independent of her body while
Kylikes – those broad, shallow, stemmed drinking cups – were a great boon for vase painters, in that the broad expanse of their exterior walls provided a convenient canvas for complicated narrative scenes. Inside, however, with its limited flat space at the center of those concave walls, the tondo presented a dastardly little challenge. And
This fragment (the interior of a mighty drinking cup attributed to Douris) has it all, but you have to peer at it closely… Front and center is a fierce warrior, striking in the way his face is drawn in three-quarters, framed by an ornate Chalcidian helmet (a thing of beauty: gleaming nose-piece, scaled culotte, checkered
Ok, I’ll admit it…I have a tendency to poopoo South Italian vase painting, dismissing it as the sloppy, derivative cousin of Attic. But when it’s good it’s really good and this is an absolute treasure – the fragment of a large skyphos attributed to the Palermo Painter. Zeus is at his most regal here, seated
While it might not be the most thrilling fragment aesthetically (the surface is a bit worn and the painter not necessarily top tier), I love this black-figure survivor because it shows the very best of the frequently weird Greek mythological birth stories. Zeus’ extramarital proclivities are well known, and his dalliance with Metis (a nymph
Captured in this sliver of a cup’s tondo is an athletically inclined gentleman in an ungainly squat. I say athletically not for his admirable bendiness, but because of that floppy stippled thing near his left knee. It’s certainly a sponge, one of the three basic accoutrements of post-athletic male hygiene, but shown far less than
This is perhaps my favourite vase (largely fragmentary, only about 20% of the big krater remains) and unfortunately one I’ve never seen in person. Euphronios’ special way of rendering the body and lining up a successful composition is clear, even in this extreme close up of the ne’er-do-well Kyknos as he lies dying on the
After the Bacchic frenzy comes the crash, apparently. The sleeping woman here is beautiful in her slumber – her face a study of strong, peaceful features (rounded chin, straight nose, and best of all those carefully outlined lips) beneath fanned out curls. Her weary head rests on a pile of fancy cushions – a sure
The photo might be less than thrilling (vases are hard!) but this is a seriously cool little lekythos in Taranto, with the sole decoration consisting of a woman gazing out from a window, her head and face nearly completely veiled (apart from some unruly blond curls). Veiling in Classical Greece and the extent to which
Fragments of two separate cups in white-ground were found in the grand sanctuary to Demeter at Eleusis and this one is small but it’s a stunner. With that jutting beard and imperious bearing, the man painted in the interior could be any number of gods or heroes save for the scales that begin under his
This is not the easiest vase to photograph or glimpse in nature (it is in the Hermitage’s permanent collection), but you might have been lucky enough to see it as I did in the glorious “Worshipping Women” exhibition some 15 years ago at the Onassis Cultural Center in midtown Manhattan. At 38 cm tall it’s
If you don’t like people and do like pots (specifically white ground lekythoi), head to the gorgeous and distressingly under-visited Kerameikos Museum. ‘Kerameikos’ refers to Athens’ potters quarter just to the northwest of the city. Refining and firing mass quantities of clay was stinky, smoky business best relegated just outside the city walls. The name
I admit to having a certain preference for the red-figure vases, with their elegant swooping lines, bodacious orange bodies, and fine drapery, and a special fondness great Athenian masters who pioneered and perfected the new technique. Shameful, I’m sure you would agree after taking a gander at this stunner! It’s from the tondo of a
Diabolically difficult to quarry and carve and imported at great expense from Egypt’s Eastern desert, by the 2nd century A.D. porphyry was inextricably linked with imperial grandeur with that purplish color becoming synonymous with royalty. So much so that when Septimius Severus died on campaign in Britain his cremated remains were allegedly brought home in
The delightfully animated winged woman on this cup fragment at Emory is likely Iris, the sprightly messenger of the gods. It’s a wonderful representation in every respect, with outstretched wings overlapping the tondo’s border, strongly articulated flight feathers, and an almost downy quality elsewhere rendered with dilute glaze. Her face is typical of the Brygos
Vase painting sometimes had a sculptural quality, and from an early period Herakles’ tidy coiffure and beard was a recipient of an attractive additive technique, with Euphronios being an early and great master of it. This fragment of a krater in Milan has all the highlights… Here the hero is in unrelenting profile, with that
If this tondo alone were to appear on the art market today, it would instantly be dismissed as a forgery: it’s an absolute outlier within Late Archaic vase painting, even jarringly different from the exterior scenes on the same cup. Happily, it was unearthed in Vulci during the early 19th century and we can dig
Cradled against the brawny chest of Euphorbos, little Oedipus’ downy flaxen head is tucked beneath the shepherd’s chin, his palm resting against that stalwart pectoral. It is unusual to see men carrying babies or children in Greek art, and even more unusual to encounter such a tender illustration (tender despite the child’s somewhat unsettling adult
A decade after the Met’s acquisition of the famous Euphronios krater for a cool 1.2 million dollars (and presumably in part as a reaction to the soaring prices of Attic pottery) a most intriguing, ingenious, and inflammatory (depending on who you ask) theory was floated…. In a series of studies, Michael Vickers (and later jointly
As far as fragments go, this one has a lot to say! It is from near the shoulder of a big white-ground lekythos, produced in Athens around 480 B.C. and attributed to the master painter Douris. Unlike many white ground lekythoi, this one did not have funerary imagery. Rather it shows a beautiful youth, his
After weeks of relentless gray rain, it seemed appropriate to start off this Monday with a stunner of a vessel as radiant and round as the sun. This is the exterior of an omphalos phiale (omphalos being Greek for belly-button / navel), named for that central circular indentation poking up into the vase’s interior. The
This is a deeply weird object in every way possible. And as mysterious as it may be, the two core lessons are: don’t antagonise Dionysos and don’t forget the power of light. In a previous post, I discussed the Trivulzio cup, a gorgeous, more straightforward cage cup with translucent and blue glass with an inscribed
This is a shocking cup in many ways. It is massive, if quite fragmentary, and provides the most heartbreaking rendering of the sack of Troy (the Iliupersis) in all of Greek art. Shown is the interior – the circular tondo in the centre, and the the upper part of a more fragmentary frieze encircling it.
Magnificent in every way, this centaur is full of exquisite mid-Hellenistic craftsmanship. When Alexander’s successors came westward to roost, they brought back precious metals and some most peculiar Persian aristocratic modes of drinking. Just look at this fellow, full of pathos and glower (face shown better in the second photo). His festive gilded wreath places
This is an unusual and very clever south Italian vase fragment now in the Allard Pierson Museum. Not only has the artist rendered an ingenious cutaway, perspectival view of a temple, he has also shown the god Apollo surveying it and his own cult statue in a rather ambivalent manner… The fragment belonged to a
On his ten year long (poor Penelope…) nautical journey home from Troy, the wily hero Odysseus encountered epic obstacles, one of the most memorable being the Sirens – mythical creatures (half-women, half-bird) who lured seafarers to their deaths with their irresistibly sweet voices. In the Odyssey, the hero’s temporary lover (poor Penelope…) Circe described the
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
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
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
Reclining slack on a wine skin, his feet dangling off the edge, this little fellow is up to silly, satyr-things. The object is an askos, a flask of sorts (for lack of a better modern term) that might not necessarily have caught my eye, except that it was part of the clever and clean reinstallation
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
Glass in antiquity is a funny thing. Unlike imported semi-precious stones, the material had no intrinsic value; instead, it was wholly based on the difficulty of technique used to work it and thus fluctuated based on technology from a luxury good to humdrum table-ware. Shown here is one of the most fabulous and luxurious examples
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
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.
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
Hard stone polished to a lustrous shine is irresistible (to me, at least, and probably also inquisitive magpies). In Cleveland’s Museum of Art, a relatively large banded agate has been painstakingly carved into a relatively tiny (only 6.5 cm tall), functional pouring vessel. It is also a wonderful example of Greek and Egyptian traditions blending
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
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