1965.38

Polychrome Flask

Ht 28.3cm; diam. 24.3cm.

Flask of disc form with circular spout and double handle. The discs of each face bear figured relief decoration. There is a ridge along the recessed zone between the discs. Smoothly-finished pale brown clay. The whole was covered first with a white slip. The handles, the spout and the recessed area between the faces were painted pink/magenta.

A: Amazon on a galloping horse, to right, her right hand raised. Part of the horse’s right foreleg, the Amazon’s right hand and right foot are missing. The background is painted mauve. Black was used for the Amazon’s hair, red for her tunic and the horse’s harness. Her cloak, which billows out in the wind behind her, is blue. Blue was also added for the ground at the horse’s rear legs. The surface below the horse’s belly was distorted by an accident in firing.

B: Bellerophon riding the winged horse Pegasos. The arrangement and the colouring are the same as on A. Missing are most of Pegasos’ right wing and foreleg, and Bellerophon’s booted right foot. The right hand is preserved in this case and it has a hole between palm and fingers where a lance could have been inserted. One supposes he was thought of as attacking the Chimaira.

Vases with relief decoration were popular at Canosa at the end of the fourth century and in the earlier part of the third. In this case we may reasonably see a derivation from metal prototypes, whether directly by moulds or more generally by inspiration. The mauve and pink, typical also of free-standing terracottas, are characteristic of this ware. A good parallel is afforded by the flask Naples inv. 16271, also from Canosa (I Greci in Occidente. La Magna Grecia nelle collezioni del Museo Archeologico di Napoli [Naples 1996] 232 no. 15.17, 241 [colour ill.]), although the colour is not so well preserved as on ours. It is decorated with a frontal view of the monster Scylla. See also the examples in the British Museum, F. van der Wielen–van Ommeren, “Vases with Polychrome and Plastic Decoration from Canosa”, in: J. Swaddling (ed.), Italian Iron Age Artefacts in the British Museum. Papers of the Sixth British Museum Classical Colloquium (London 1986) 215-226, where she also treats issues of chronology on the basis of tomb finds. Our vase is mentioned at p. 219 with n. 29.

The composition of a figure on a prancing horse, right arm raised, cloak flying out behind, is well suited to the circular field. By this stage a traditional motif, it is reminiscent of the similar figures on the frieze of the Mausoleum or the Alexander sarcophagus. The style, however, shows a further development, not only in the very muscular horses, but also in the small head and long neck of the riders. It is interesting to compare Tarentine relief sculpture of the end of the fourth century and the early third, e.g. J.C. Carter, American Journal of Archaeology 74, 1970, 125-137; for the horses especially, compare his pl. 29, pl.30, 6 and pl. 31, 7. Carter’s illustration of a detail of the Alexander mosaic, pl.32, 22, is to the point (his pl. 32, 21 illustrates this piece). The Tarentine reliefs are also discussed and well-illustrated by Lippolis in E. Lippolis (ed.), Arte e artigianato in Magna Grecia (Naples 1996) 493-504. The origin of the motif of the triumphant horseman seems to lie in public monuments in Athens of the later fifth century: see the excellent analysis by H.R. Goette, “Images in the Athenian ‘Demosion Sema’”, in: O. Palagia (ed.), Art in Athens during the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge 2009) 188-206.

The flask imitates a metal prototype and it seems to have been designed originally as a traveller’s vessel. It was normally carried by a strap which went round its neck and it sat flat against the person’s body. It is depicted on terracotta figurines of travellers (and especially, in the remains, in depictions of actors from comedy in the rôle of travellers) from as early as the end of the fifth century BC. The flask seems to have become popular in Apulian pottery at this period, particularly in the northern part of the region. One may, for example, compare a piece acquired by the Manchester Museum which is decorated in local late black-figure: Journal of Hellenic Studies 108, 1988, pl. 8c.

American Journal of Archaeology 74, 1970, pl. 32, 21 (Carter); J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 64-65; J. Swaddling (ed.), Italian Iron Age Artefacts in the British Museum. Papers of the Sixth British Museum Classical Colloquium (London 1986) 219 with n. 29 (F. van der Wielen–van Ommeren); Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae viii (1994) s.v. Pegasos, no. 237 (Lochin).