2008.07

Attic Red-Figure Loutrophoros-Hydria

On loan from Parliament House to which it was presented by the Greek Government in August 1949; from Greece (and probably from Attica). Ht as rest. 26.6cm; diam. 7.8cm.

Reconstructed from fragments. The foot and the vertical handle are missing and have been restored. The mouth has been broken into pieces and reconstructed but without serious restoration or repainting. The neck has been broken and rejoined. There has been some abrasion to the horizontal handle above the left of the main scene.

There is a broad fillet at the base of the neck. The handles at the shoulder are of flattened oval section.

Somewhat lustrous black glaze, slightly misfired in places. There is no wash inside. The inner faces of the side handles are reserved. All the reserved surfaces are reddened. On the upper face of the mouth, there is a band of black just within the lip. The upper part of the inner face of the neck is painted. The underside of the mouth is black and decorated in added white with a waving line and at the outer edge with a band of zigzag.

On the neck is a scene of two women, each wearing chiton and himation and with headbands in added white about their hair. The one on the left holds a sash in her right hand, the one on the right a torch. There is no relief contour. The area of the neck behind the handle is reserved. There is a series of vertical strokes on the band at the base of the neck both at the front of the vase and in the spaces between the side and rear handles. On the shoulder in the same areas are tongues.

On the body is a scene of a charioteer driving a quadriga, right. Behind him a youth wearing a himation and leaning on a staff looks back to the left, past a stele, towards a mature man who runs forward in front of the chariot group carrying a pair of torches. He wears a chitoniskos and cloak and has a petasos slung about his neck. On the wall between the onlooker and the charioteer are two sashes. On the lower wall, rays.

The wheel of the chariot was created from pair of compass-drawn, incised circles. Relief contour is used throughout the scene, even for the stele and torches, by contrast with the figures on the neck.

One may remark that the male who carries torches in front of the chariot has the dress of a horseman.

This is a small version of the vessel designed to carry spring-water for the ritual bridal bath before a wedding, and its function was extended to accompany an unmarried woman to her grave for her use in the afterlife, recognising that at death she passed from the control of the dominant male of her family to that of Hades. On the other hand the discovery of a loutrophoros in a woman’s grave may not necessarily imply that she was unmarried: it is conceivable that she could have kept the vase as a souvenir after her marriage and that it later came to be buried with her.

The standard work on weddings in ancient Greece is J.H. Oakley and R.H. Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens (Wisconsin Studies in Classics, Madison 1993), but there is useful material, too, in S.R. Roberts, The Attic Pyxis (Chicago 1978). There has also been a good deal of recent discussion on the overlap in ritual between wedding and funeral for women and how that is to be interpreted: see I. Jenkins, “Is There Life after Marriage? A Study of the Abduction Motif in Vase-Paintings of the Athenian Wedding Ceremony”, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 30, 1983, 137-146; R. Mösch-Klingele, “Loutrá und Loutrophóros im Totenkult. Die literarischen Zeugnisse”, in: R.F. Docter and E.M. Moormann (eds), Proceedings of the XVth International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Amsterdam, July 12 - 17, 1998. Classical Archaeology towards the Third Millennium: Reflections and Perspectives (Amsterdam 1999) 273-275; ead., “Le mariage et la mort sur les loutrophores”, AION 10, 1988, 117-139; ead., Die Loutrophóros im Hochzeits- und Begräbnisritual des 5. Jahrhunderts v.Chr. in Athen (Berne 2006); and now her Braut ohne Bräutigam. Schwarz- und rotfigurige Lutrophoren als Spiegel gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen in Athen (Mainz 2010); R. Rehm, Marriage to Death: The Conflation of Wedding and Funeral Rituals in Greek Tragedy (Princeton 1994); and the range of excellent articles in O. Cavalier (ed.), Silence et fureur. La femme et le mariage en Grèce. Les antiquités grecques du Musée Calvet (Avignon 1996). Then there is the important commentary by V. Sabetai on pll. 20-30 of Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Athens, Benaki Museum (1). There is also a good series of loutrophoroi with wedding scenes illustrated in E.D. Reeder (ed.), Pandora. Women in Classical Athens (Baltimore – Princeton 1995) 161-172.

J. Bergemann, “Die sogenannte Lutrophoros: Grabmal für unverheiratete Tote?”, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 111, 1996, 149-190, is concerned, inter alia, with the terminology used and with the on-going question of whether the loutrophoros-hydria was used primarily for females; see also G. Kokula, Marmorlutrophoren (Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 10. Beiheft, Berlin 1984), and S. Kaempf-Dimitriadou, “Aus einem Grabperibolos: Die Marmorlutrophoros des Philon in Athen”, Antike Kunst 43, 2000, 70-84, esp. 72-77, and for a modifying recent view K. Margariti, “Lament and Death instead of Marriage: The Iconography of Deceased Maidens on Attic Grave Reliefs of the Classical Period”, Hesperia 87, 2018, 901-176.

For the cult and the practice, see for example H. Winkler, Lutrophorie: Ein Hochzeitskult auf attischen Vasenbildern (Freiburg 1999), and especially the excellent article by V. Sabetai, “Marker Vase or Burnt Offering? The Clay Loutrophoros in Context”, in: A. Tsingarida (ed.), Shapes and Uses of Greek Vases (7^th – 4^th centuries B.C.). Proceedings of the Symposium Held at the Université libre de Bruxelles, 27-29 april 2006 (Brussels 2009) 291-306. She discusses the archaeological evidence for their use and context, pointing out that many were smashed as a deliberate act during the funerary ceremonies. One notes how ours is reconstructed from fragments and that its foot is missing.) She also provides a perspective on their study in modern times. She has also written usefully on loutrophoroi and nuptial lebetes, “The Wedding Vases of the Athenians: A View from Sanctuaries and Houses”, Mètis 12, 2014, 51-79.

One should also read F. De Polignac, “Rites funéraires, mariage et communauté politique. Archéologie des rites et anthropologie historique”, Mètis 11, 1996, 197-207.

There is a report of the presentation of the vase in the Canberra Times of 23 August 1949 (with the implication that it had occurred on the previous day):

Vase Presented to Mr Chifley

Athenian vase dating from 450 B.C. has been presented to the Prime Minister (Mr Chifley) by Canon W.J. Edwards, Chief of the International Children’s Emergency Fund, on behalf of the Greek Government.

presentation was made as a mark of appreciation for the assistance Australia has given Greece in her present trials and tribulations.

Edwards also presented a modern oil painting to the Minister for External Affairs (Dr Evatt) on behalf of the Greek Government.

He will return to his post in Greece in September after visiting New Zealand.

We are pleased to include here a photograph of the occasion from the National Archives (see images). It shows Chifley examining the vase, characteristically with his pipe in his other hand.

On the ‘trials and tribulations’ Greece continued to suffer after the end of World War II, see C.M. Woodhouse, The Struggle for Greece, 1941-1949 (London 1976, 2nd ed. 2002) and A. Gerolymatos, Red Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War and the Origins of Soviet-American Rivalry, 1943-1949 (New York 2004).

We remain uncertain of the vase’s findspot, but in the circumstances it would not be completely surprising if it had come from the excavations of the ancient cemetery at the site of the Royal Stables in Odos Stadiou in Athens: see the report by Semni Karouzou, BCH 71-72, 1947-48, 385-391. Sabetai (above) 302 n. 71 points out that, although Karouzou recorded that three loutrophoroi were recovered from a single pyre, only two can now be located. On the other hand our vase shows no sign of the burning one might have expected and so it may be more likely that it derives from some other source. A good number were discovered in central Attica during these years. We are grateful to Dr Sabetai for her help in trying to resolve this issue.

Unpublished.