Acquisition number: 1973.10
Other images
Attic Black-Figure Lekythos.
The lip is painted inside and out as well as on the upper face. On the shoulder are lotus buds with dots and bars above. At the top of the wall is a dot band (both black and white dots). The main scene is of Herakles and the Cretan Bull. Herakles bends forward and seizes the animal from above, spreading his arms round its chest. Its front legs buckle. The hero’s bow and quiver hang above, and bunches of drapery are placed to right and left of the scene.
Added red was used for the fillet about Herakles’ head, for dots decorating his skirt and on the bull’s neck; there are also stripes of red decorating the garments hanging at the sides. Added white was used for the bull’s horns and mouth and for the end of its tail, for the quiver strap (hanging in the field), for dots on the skin hanging from Herakles’ waist and for the dot-fruit on the ivy in the field. Below are lines. There is a scraped groove at the junction of lower wall and foot. The vertical face of the foot and the underside are reserved.
Title: Attic Black-Figure Lekythos - 1973.10
Acquisition number: 1973.10
Attribution: Class of Athens 581 (1).
Culture or period: Archaic Greece.
Date: Earlier 5th century BC.
Material: Clay - Terracotta
Object type: Pottery - Black-figure
Dimensions: 66mm (w) × 144mm (h)
Origin region or location: Greece
Origin city: Athens.
Display case or on loan: 3
Keywords: Greek, Attic, Black Figure, Herakles, Cretan Bull, Class of Athens
J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 27. Beazley Archive Pottery Database 7659.
1973.10
Attic Black-Figure Lekythos
Cyril Henry Leach Bequest, by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. Ht 14.4cm; diam. 6.6cm.
Reconstructed from fragments. A large section of the wall is missing from the back of the vase and is restored in plaster; missing also are the handle and parts of the foot. The figurework has not been repainted.
The lip is painted inside and out as well as on the upper face. On the shoulder are lotus buds with dots and bars above. At the top of the wall is a dot band (both black and white dots). The main scene is of Herakles and the Cretan Bull. Herakles bends forward and seizes the animal from above, spreading his arms round its chest. Its front legs buckle. The hero’s bow and quiver hang above, and bunches of drapery are placed to right and left of the scene.
Added red was used for the fillet about Herakles’ head, for dots decorating his skirt and on the bull’s neck; there are also stripes of red decorating the garments hanging at the sides. Added white was used for the bull’s horns and mouth and for the end of its tail, for the quiver strap (hanging in the field), for dots on the skin hanging from Herakles’ waist and for the dot-fruit on the ivy in the field. Below are lines. There is a scraped groove at the junction of lower wall and foot. The vertical face of the foot and the underside are reserved.
Class of Athens 581 (i); cf. J.D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford 1956) 489ff. and Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford 1971) 222ff. The drawing seems rather Haemonian: cf. Paralipomena 228 for such a combination of painting and potting.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae v (1990) s.v. Herakles, nos 2340-2343 gives a selection of similar versions of this scene in vase-painting. The arrangement is like that of the next, with the boar, and some of the versions of his combat with the lion (e.g. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum New Zealand (1) pl. 22, 11-13).
To capture the bull and bring it to Eurystheus in Mycenae was Herakles’ seventh labour.
Earlier part of the fifth century BC.
J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 27. Beazley Archive Pottery Database 7659.