1984.02

Attic Black-Figure Amphora (type B)

Purchased to commemorate Richard StC. Johnson’s term as Professor of Classics, 1962-1984. Ht 40.2cm; diam. 27.9cm.

Broken into a small number of fragments and rejoined without significant restoration or repainting except for a triangular area on side A which includes part of Herakles’ chest, his lower right arm and the nose of the lion.

The shape is an amphora of type B of standard form: the handles are of circular section; the foot has a curved outer face, flat resting surface, and a concave inner face, offset from the underside of the floor.

A: Two warriors in combat over a fallen warrior, with a cloaked, beardless male onlooker to either side. The combatants wear full armour, with crested Corinthian helmets. The fallen warrior lies prone with his shield lying over him, but although he has helmet and greaves as well as his shield, he does not have a cuirass. Incision is used to indicate the beards of both warriors below the cheek-pieces of their helmets, and the beard of the fallen warrior. Below the scene, a groundline in dilute glaze.

Added red is used for the hair of the two onlookers; for broad stripes on their cloaks; for the helmets of both warriors and for the crest of the one on the left; to decorate the breast and bottom of the latter’s cuirass and for stripes on the skirt of his chitoniskos; on the right warrior for the skirt of his chitoniskos, on his greaves, and for the rim of his shield; on the fallen warrior’s helmet and on the body of his shield. Added white is used for the front edge of the cloak of both onlookers; to outline the crest-supports of the warriors’ helmets; for dots on the edge of the right warrior’s chitoniskos and the front edge of that on the left; for dots decorating the rim of the fallen warrior’s shield; for the left warrior’s bandolier; for the shield device (tripod) of the right warrior.

B: Herakles fighting the Nemean lion between two onlookers, the one on the left a female, the one on the right a bearded male. The hero uses his sword to stab the lion in the throat. His scabbard is visible between his body and the lion’s tail. The figure on the right carries Herakles’ club. The woman on the left wears a peplos and has a fillet about her head. Below the scene, a groundline in dilute glaze.

Added red is used for the pupil of the woman’s eye, for her fillet, for the upper part of her peplos and stripes on the skirt; for Herakles’ hair and beard; for the lion’s mane; for the hair and beard of the male on the right. Added white is used for the woman’s flesh and for dots decorating the edge of the overfall of her peplos; for Herakles’ baldrick.

There is a palmette and lotus chain between dilute glaze lines above each of the scenes; there are red dots on the hearts of some of the palmettes in the centre above the combat scene but not above the Herakles scene. There is a band of black within the lip (the upper face of the lip is reserved). There is no wash inside. At the base of the wall, a zone of rays with lines of dilute glaze above and below. The resting surface of the foot and the whole of the underside are reserved. There is no wash inside the vase. There is a band of red at the upper edge of the lip (now rather worn), three red bands around the neck, a double red band below scenes and again above the rays; three further bands on the foot. There is an accidental blob of red on the foot.

See images for graffito on underside: see Johnston, Trademarks on Greek Vases (Warminster 1979) 84 type 25A and 191. The graffiti of this series are predominantly from Group E and doubtless indicate some on-going trading arrangement from this workshop. Johnston, Addenda (see below) suggests correctly that the mark on ours was made before firing; this would imply that the vase was part of an order placed in advance by a dealer or trader.

About 530-520 BC. The vase is attributable to the so-called Group E, the cluster of vase-painters in the stylistic circle of Exekias, to whose work they at times come very close. On Group E, see the lists in J.D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford 1956) 133-138, Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford 1971) 54-57, and T.H. Carpenter et al., Beazley Addenda: Additional References to ABV, ARV² & Paralipomena (2nd ed., Oxford 1989) 35-39, and, more generally, E.E. Bell, “An Exekian Puzzle in Portland. Further Light on the Relationship between Exekias and Group E”, in: W.G. Moon (ed.), Ancient Greek Art and Iconography (Madison 1983) 75-86. This article is largely concerned with Herakles and the Lion in Group E. Also note E.A. Mackay, “Painters near Exekias”, in: J. Christiansen and T. Melander (eds), Ancient Greek and Related Pottery, Proceedings of the 3rd Symposium, Copenhagen August 31-September 4 1987 (Copenhagen 1988) 369-378, and for the larger picture the same author’s Tradition and Originality: A Study of Exekias (BAR international series 2092, Oxford 2010). Important too is a catalogue accompanying a recent exhibition in Zurich: Chr. Reusser and M. Bürge (eds), Exekias hat mich gemalt und getöpfert (2018). It includes some pieces from Group E as well as giving an up-to-date catalogue raisonné of Exekias’ work.

The absence of a cuirass on the fallen warrior on Side A is in some apparent contradiction with the presence of the rest of his armour. The painter was presumably drawing on a tradition in which the battle was over the armour as well as over the body. (One remembers, for example, that in the Iliad Hector stripped the body of Patroklos of the armour that Achilles had lent him.) For scenes of this kind, see S. Muth, Gewalt im Bild, Das Phänomen der medialen Gewalt im Athen des 6. und 5. Jh. v.Chr. (Berlin 2006), and H. van Wees, Status Warriors. War, Violence and Society in Homer and History (Amsterdam 1992). M. Recke, Gewalt und Leid. Das Bild des Krieges bei den Athenern im 6. und 5. Jh. v.Chr. (Istanbul 2002) 11-20 provides a formal analysis of such scenes on a chronological basis. Important also is D. Saunders, "Mourning Glory? The Depiction of Fallen Warriors in Black-Figure Vase-Painting", in: E. Macauley-Lewis, L. Hau, and E. Bragg (eds), Beyond the Battlefields of the Graeco-Roman World (Newcastle 2008) 161-183. He stresses that the images express élite ideals, presenting death on the battlefield in a positive fashion. For a similar approach, see among others N. Loraux, “Mourir devant Troie, tomber pour Athènes. De la gloire des héros à l'idée de la cité”, Information sur les Sciences Sociales/Social Science Information 17:6, 1978, 801-817.

The addition of the red dots to some of the palmettes over the scene on B may indicate that the painter thought of that scene as the main one.  The subject of Herakles and the Lion is much repeated on the amphorae of Group E, with many variants in detail. Compare the amphora in Kassel where there is the same subject (though with some differences in the onlookers) and a more clearly similar warrior scene (R. Lullies, “Eine Amphora aus dem Kreis des Exekias”, Antike Kunst 7, 1964, 82-90 [Beazley, Paralipomena 56, 31 bis]). Somewhat nearer our scene is Toronto 919.5.176, Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters 134, 11, Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (1) pl. 2.

Herakles quickly discovered that the lion’s skin was impenetrable by normal weapons and our painter was probably attempting to show Herakles’ initial, unsuccessful encounter with the creature. An amphora in the Villa Giulia Museum in Rome has a bent sword below the figures of the hero and the lion as he struggles to strangle it, and one could take it as depicting the stage following that shown on ours (Villa Giulia 50406, Mingazzini, Coll. Castellani i, pl. 65, 1; K. Schefold, Gods and Heroes in Late Archaic Greek Art [Cambridge 1992] 100 fig. 114; Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters 291). In the end, of course, he strangled it and then cleverly used its own claws to take its skin for himself.

Herakles’ encounter with the lion of Nemea was canonically the hero’s first labour. For other scenes involving Herakles in the Museum’s collection, see under the black-figure lekythos 1962.02. There is a very useful overview of scenes of Herakles in combat with the lion in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, v (1990) 16-34 (W. Felten); note more recently A.A. Lemos, “Herakles and the Nemean Lion on Rhodes. Two Athenian Black Figure Olpai from Ilyos and Camiros”, Archaiognosia 14, 2006, 151-166. There is also a collection of articles on his combats with animals in C. Bonnet, C. Jourdain-Annequin and V. Pirenne-Delforge (eds), Le Bestiaire d'Héraclès. IIIe Rencontre héracléenne (Kernos Suppl. 7, Liège 1998) and in particular A. Schnapp-Gourbeillon, “Les lions d’Héraclès” at pp. 109-126. There is a well-judged overview of scenes of Herakles and his labours by Schefold in the book mentioned in the previous paragraph. Note also R. Vollkommer, Herakles in the Art of Classical Greece (Oxford 1988) and the splendid and well-illustrated coverage in R. Wünsche (ed.), Herakles Herkules (Munich 2003): the encounter with the lion is dealt with at pp. 68-90.

One takes the man on the right to be Herakles’ normal companion, Iolaos: he is normally shown as young and unbearded, but it is not without parallel at this period for him to be given a beard. The woman is in the position where one might normally expect Athena, but she does not have the attributes of the goddess. ‘Iolaos’ raises his hand in a gesture which can be read as surprise, alarm (at the lion’s failure to die by the sword) or amazement.

For onlookers such as those on this vase and a number of other black-figure vases in the collection, see the analysis and discussion by M.D. Stansbury-O’Donnell, Vase Painting, Gender, and Social Identity in Archaic Athens (Cambridge 2006).

Sotheby (London), Sale Cat., 9 July 1984, no. 314 (colour ill.); Collection of Classics 8 (wrongly captioned); A.W. Johnston, Trademarks on Greek Vases. Addenda (Oxford 2006) 60, type 25A no. 8a. Beazley Archive Pottery Database 8244.