Five
The Heidelberg Painter—Little-Master Cups—Amasis
In our second chapter we spoke of a type of kylix to which we gave the conventional name of "Siana cup."[*] We saw that this was the dominant type of cup in the second quarter of the sixth century; that there were two ways of decorating the exterior—what we called "overlap" and "double-decker"; and that the chief artist was the C Painter. The Heidelberg Painter,[1] so called after two cups in Heidelberg, also specialised in Siana cups, and has left some sixty of them, fragmentary or complete. When I first wrote about him, I was impressed by the resemblance he bears to a great artist of the middle and third quarter of the sixth century, the Amasis Painter, of whom we shall speak presently, and I had to consider the possibility that the two might be the same, that the cups of the Heidelberg Painter were simply the early work of the Amasis Painter. I now perceive that this is impossible; the two artists overlap, but the resemblance remains, however it is to be accounted for, whether the Amasis Painter was taught by the other, or whether they learned from the same teacher, or whatever the reason. On the other hand it is likely that the Heidelberg Painter was at one time a colleague of the C Painter and was supplied by the same potter.
A cup in Florence is an early work of the Heidelberg Painter.[2] The figures are shorter than in his later cups, quainter and more old-fashioned. Outside, the decoration, which is the same on both halves, is of overlap type. It is one of those scenes in the palaestra which become common in the second quarter of the sixth century, here wrestling (pl. 42, 1). A man sinks on one knee and throws a youth. A piece is missing on the left, but both hands of the youth are visible; he shows no distress—wrestling is rich in peripeteiai , and the tables are often turned. The referee, wand in hand, stoops and peers. This vivid group of three is flanked by four figures of officials,
[*] See pp. 19–20.
[1] For numbered notes to chapter v see pages 100–102.
shouldering their wands. There have been such onlookers before, but they are more frequent in middle and later black-figure than in early. Sometimes their presence is more or less justified by the subject, as here; at other times there is really no excuse for them so far as the subject goes, as when Herakles wrestles with the Lion, or clubs the Centaur, and they merely serve to make a short strip into a long one, or, let us say, to give a deadly struggle the appearance of a sporting event. Some artists are more partial to spectators than others; the Heidelberg Painter likes them, and so does the Amasis Painter. Very formal artists naturally tend to use them more than others do.
Inside the Florence cup, Ajax retrieves the body of Achilles from the battlefield (pl. 42, 2). The tondo is incomplete, but one can see that Ajax runs with his burden instead of toiling under it as in the earlier and more solemn group on the François vase (pl. 28, 1–2).
On a cup in Munich (pl. 42, 3–4),[3] the kernel of one half consists of a warrior arming. He lifts his leg to put on the greave; it is a characteristic attitude, and this is the moment in the process of arming that is most frequently represented in the archaic period.[4] The helmet on the ground serves to fill the gap below the lifted leg. From each side a youth walks up, one bearing the shield, emblazoned with a serpent, which is partly in the round, the other raising a hand in encouragement. There are four onlookers, two on the left, two on the right. The other subject is taken from the palaestra, but the athletes have been reduced to one, and all the other figures are spectators. A youth steps forward, preparing to throw the discus; unexpected so early is the foreshortening of the discus, which is seen in three-quarter view.[5] This is a late work of the Heidelberg Painter. The drawing is more elegant than on his early athlete cup in Florence, less quaint but also less spirited; he has come under the influence of the new ideal of which Kleitias was among the first representatives.
A cup in Wüzburg is also from the painter's later period.[6] One ofthe outside pictures is formal, Dionysos, seated, receiving the homage of men and women (pl. 43, 1). The other is more lively. The subject is the same as on the seventhcentury masterpiece in Berlin, Peleus bringing his infant son to Chiron (pl. 43, 2). This is usually a quiet episode; here the artist has chosen to quicken the pace, he has produced the appearance of excitement, and an amusing contrast between the hasty, heated males and the serious females; but of course he has sacrificed the ethos of the legend. The woman behind Peleus may be thought of as his wife, the goddess Thetis.[7] The three behind Chiron are the centaur's womenfolk, who, according to Pindar, took a large share in the education of Chiron's pupils. Pindar speaks of the boy Achilles as "staying in the house of Philyra,"[8] and in the great scene in the fourth Pythian ode, the young Jason, when he makes his soft and beautiful answer to the insulting words of his uncle Pelias, begins: "Chiron was my teacher. I come from the cave, from Chariklo and Philyra, where the holy daughters of the centaur reared me," parCariklouV kaiFiluraVina Kentauroumekourai qreyanagnai .[9]
It is a far cry from the poet at his most pellucid to the humble and even somewhat misguided work of the early vase-painter, but the women are the family of Chiron. It
is possible that the artist could not have named them, but it is also possible that he intended the foremost of them for Chariklo, Chiron's wife, the second for Philyra, Chiron's mother, and the third for a daughter of Chiron and Chariklo.
There is some modern repainting in the figures, and it is well therefore to look at the incomplete picture of the same subject on the fragment of a somewhat earlier cup by the same painter in Palermo (pl. 43, 3).[10] The eager pair Peleus and Chiron are here accompanied by Hermes, who has guided Peleus to the habitation of the centaur on Mount Pelion. This trio forms the heart of the design. A vestige of the Thetis, if Thetis it be, is preserved behind Peleus, and the greater part of Chariklo behind Hermes.
Towards the middle of the sixth century a shape of cup was invented which took the place of the Siana cup as the dominant type in the middle and the third quarter. This is the Little-Master cup. It is of very light make, with an offset lip and a tall stem. It is descended from the Siana cup, but it is a new model. Its immediate forerunner is the "Gordion cup" practised by the artists of the François vase, Ergotimos and Kleitias. A little cup of delicate fabric, bearing the double signature of these two artists, was found far in the East, at Gordion in Phrygia, and is now in Berlin (pl. 44, 1–3).[11] It is neither a Siana cup nor a Little-Master cup, but may be thought of as one of the experiments that led to the creation of the Little-Master cup. There are a few other kylikes of this type by various potters, and one calls them "Gordion cups."[12] Outside, the lip is black, and apart from a palmette at each side of the handles the only decoration consists of the artists' signatures in fine letters. Inside is a small picture of three dolphins and a fish, which is surrounded by a broad band of simple patterns—tongues, dot-bands, lines—like the borders on Siana cups. It is not unnatural for an artist to treat the inside of a bowl, or part of it, as if it were a round pond, lake, harbour, or sea. Pour in liquid and the likeness increases. Kleitias has thought of a round piece of water, with sea-creatures in it. It is encircled by vegetation—what we call "tongue-pattern" was still leafage to him,—forming, with its cinctures, a waterside. There was a "round harbour" (limhnkukloteShield of Herakles in the poem: "On the shield there was a harbour with safe haven from the raging sea, circular, made of refined tin, and seeming to heave with waves: two silver dolphins, spouting, were (chasing?) the mute fish."[13]
Reconstructors of the Shield lay no stress on the word kukloterhV there is a representation of a limn: kukloterhV , with a dolphin in it, on archaic coins of Zancle, Messina.[14] Before Kleitias, a round water appears, with dolphins in it, and fish swimming towards a plant (water-lily) in the middle, on the finest of all Laconian vases, a cup in Taranto;[15] and similar seascapes or water-pieces on two other Laconian cups.[16] A much earlier work reminds one of the Laconian cup. The golden bowl in the Louvre given by the Egyptian king Thothmes III to the priest and general Dhowti[17] forms a round lake (limnh trocoeidhV ) with a rosette—a plant—in the middle, a row of lotus-flowers round about, and fishes swimming between the two. Later Egyptian bowls of blue faience[18] have similar subjects and help to bridge the
gap between the fifteenth century B.C. , the time of Thothmes, and the beginning of the sixth, the date of the Laconian cup. Lastly, out of countless later works, let us recall an early mediaeval colour-piece, also in the Louvre, the patine of Saint-Denis, where in a sea of dark green serpentine golden fishes swim.[19]
Ergotimos is not known to have made Little-Master cups, but cups by his son Eucheiros are very nearly of that type.[20] There are two species of Little-Master cup, the lip-cup and the band-cup.[21] In the lip-cup the lip is tooled clearly off from the bowl, and the outside of the lip is reserved (pl. 45, 1 and 3). In the band-cup the lip is not tooled off, but passes into the bowl with a gradual curve, and is black outside as well as in. A minor difference between the two is that in the band-cup, but not in the other, there is often a small fillet, usually painted red, at the junction of bowl and stem. The reason for this difference is that the lip-cup is "punctuated" twice, between bowl and lip and between stem and bowl; whereas the band-cup is punctuated once only, between bowl and stem, and the potter feels that he must strengthen the single punctuation—a colon against the two commas of the lip-cup. This insistence on diarqrwsiV , distinct articulation, is Greek. One example: Aristotle, it will be remembered, points out that the female body is less beautiful than the male because the several parts are less clearly marked off from each other; it lacks diarqrwsiV . In many lip-cups and in nearly all band-cups the interior is plain, painted black, except for a small reserved disc in the middle, containing a circle and its centre. A good many lip-cups, however, have a round picture inside; in this they keep the tradition of the Siana cup alive, and help to hand down the round picture to the great red-figure cup-painters. Outside, the figure-decoration of the lip-cup is on the lip, and consists of a small brief picture in the middle of each half: one, two, sometimes three figures, animal or human—what Payne has called "spot-light" treatment.[22] The only decoration of the handle-zone is an inscription, though even that is sometimes omitted, and there is often a small palmette at each side of the handle. In the band-cup the lip is black, and the decoration is in the handle-zone, which it usually fills with many figures. In general effect the lip-cup is a bright vase, one sees much of the clay surface; the band-cup is a dark vase, with little of the clay surface allowed to show, just as the amphora is a dark vase, while the neck-amphora is a bright vase. Lastly, the quality of the lip-cup is in general higher than that of the band-cup.
It is in the small, often tiny, designs on the Little-Master cups, more than anywhere else, that the true miniature style of drawing, perfected by Kleitias, is continued. We speak of the Little-Masters, although some of the decorators of lip-cups and band-cups painted full-size pictures as well. Perhaps the finest of Little-Master cups is the lip-cup with the signature of the potter Phrynos in the British Museum.[23] Unfortunately it is incomplete; the foot is alien, so that one does not get the full effect of the vase as a whole. The handle-zone has the usual row of letters between the handle-palmettes: on one half, Phrynos made me, hail ; on the other, Hail and drink me, yes . These are far the commonest kinds of inscriptions on Little-Master cups: the signature of the potter or a salute to the drinker. It will be noticed that the inscription
is not, as in most sorts of vase, an explanatory adjunct to the picture, but an integral part of the decoration as a whole.[24] The handle-zone is bordered above by a thin black band, stressing, once more, the articulation of the cup. One might have expected the band to come immediately below the offset of the lip, but it is always well below, and one sees why: if it were right under the picture on the lip it would tell too strongly, would kill the inch- or two-inch-high miniatures.[25] The subject on one side is the Birth of Athena (pl. 44, 4), which we found represented, for the first time in Attica, on the C Painter's pyxis in the Louvre (pl. 20, 2).[*] Here the painter has reduced the scene, rendered elsewhere with many figures and much circumstance, to the three principal characters. Zeus sits on his throne, brandishing the thunderbolt in his excitement. Athena bursts from his head; Hephaistos, who has cleft the skull, moves off, axe in hand, and looking back raises his hand, whether in surprise, as in earlier vases, or as if satisfied with his work. The Zeus, sitting with his legs well forward and his arms in full action, is very different from the passive, almost cowed creature in the C Painter's "Birth of Athena" and many others. In the second and slightly more elaborate picture two of the characters are the same; Herakles arrives in Olympus and is introduced by Athena his protectress to her father, and his, Zeus (pl. 44, 5). The hero, on him all he owns—white shirt, lionskin, bow, arrow, quiver, and club,—is led smartly forward by the eager goddess; Zeus, sceptred, extends a hand. For vigour and movement, for terseness, finish, and narrative power, these two small pictures are black-figure at its best. The drawing is alive in every line; even what is inanimate has life—the lionskin, the thrones. The figures are very short, with large heads: this is regular in Little-Master cups: the picture-space is so shallow that if the proportions were normal the figures would be too tenuous.
Phrynos signs as potter, FrunoV epoihsen , and we do not know whether he painted the cup as well as fashioned it. We call the artist "the Phrynos Painter," and can point to other, unsigned works by the same hand. A lip-cup in the Vatican[26] has no figures outside, only a greeting, Hail and drink , between the handles (pl. 45, 1). The chief decoration is a round picture inside (pl. 45, 2), and the theme is familiar from the François vase or the cup by the Heidelberg Painter in Florence,[**] Ajax rescuing the body of Achilles. Here the body is naked, which is unusual in this subject, but the inscriptions rounding out the design show that the artist means Ajax and Achilles, and no others. Much energy, though not the grandeur of the Kleitian group. There is a little repainting in the middle of the picture.
The most typical, perhaps, of the Little-Masters is the Tleson Painter, who decorated most if not all of the sixty-odd cups that bear the signature of the potter Tleson, son of Nearchos (pl. 45, 3).[27] The father's work has been spoken of already. Many of the Tleson cups have no decoration beyond the signature between the handles; others have a brief picture on the lip, others a round picture inside, and a few both. The subject is commonly an animal, and the tondo of a Tleson cup in New York (pl. 45, 4), with the time-honoured design of two goats confronted and a plant
[*] See p. 22.
[**] See p. 47 and pl. 42, 2.
between them, is an exquisite example of the painter's animal-style.[28] Goats in New York and Boston (pl. 45, 5), cocks in New York (pl. 46, 1–2) and Berlin (pl. 46, 3), swans in Nicosia (pl. 46, 4),[29] will serve as specimens of the external decoration on his cups. His animals are as characteristic as other artists' people, and are readily recognised even when, as on his few band-cups, the usual signature is suppressed. Thus the goat of the lip-cups reappears on the unsigned band-cup in Munich (pl. 46, 5),[30] and on the other half of it the cocks of the lip-cups (pl. 46, 6), only with their hackles up, confront each other in the presence of their hens. The sirens flanking the goat are the same as in other signed works. No less personal are his sphinxes and lions, stags and swans. On another band-cup by the Tleson Painter, in the Cabinet des Médailles, Paris, the goat is replaced by a stag, and the sirens spread their wings.[31] Not many of the cups signed Tleson have human figures, but the lively cup in London with the Return of the Hunter (pl. 46, 7)[32] should doubtless be assigned to the same hand as the animal pieces, although there happen to be no hounds, horses, or foxes on them to compare.
We have looked at one band-cup and assigned it to the Tleson Painter. A larger and more elaborate band-cup, in Munich (pl. 47, 1–2), bears the signature of two potters, Archikles and Glaukytes;[33] how they shared the work is not known. On each half of the exterior a symmetrical composition of many small figures fills the handlezone. The Hunting of the Calydonian Boar is treated in the same way as on the François vase, though of course with less variety and much less art. The hunters are all naked, and each man, with one exception, wields two weapons. The hounds are named, as in Kleitias, as well as the hunters. On the other half, Theseus slays the Minotaur in presence of a goodly company. Athena stands on one side holding the hero's lyre, LYPA, which he will need, as we know from Kleitias, in the victory dance; on the other side stands Ariadne, holding, as in Kleitias, the skein which had threaded the Labyrinth, and a wreath or crown. Behind her is her nurse, the trofoV , again known from Kleitias; being of humbler origin that the rest, she has less selfcontrol, and roots vigorously. There was not room for the fourteen sons and daughters of Athens, but there are full seven on the left side, if only five on the right. The painter has inadvertently given one of the youths a beard; it is suggested that he was thinking of King Minos,[34] who is sometimes present at the death of the Minotaur, and the figure is named Simon, which is, after all, an anagram of Minos. All the girls have the old-fashioned "penguin" look. The handles are flanked by sphinxes; they have no connexion with the Hunt or with Theseus—each pair forms a picture by itself,—but they cannot help looking round at the main scenes. No other work by the painter has been identified; and the same must be said about some of the best band-cups: the arming fragment in the Vatican (pl. 46, 8);[35] the pleasing fragments with spidery men and women dancing, in Samos; and above all the cup in New York which has the Return of Hephaistos on one half, and Dionysos with Ariadne on the other (pl. 48, 1–2).[36] Hephaistos, mounted on a handsome mule, is led by Dionysos and escorted by a satyr. The figure in the very middle of the picture is not either of the principals, but the satyr, who turns his head into full front view and glowers at
the spectator. A satyr playing the flute, and a satyr and two maenads dancing, head the procession; and five satyrs and maenads, all dancing, bring up the rear. In the other picture, Ariadne stands still, in the middle, with Dionysos facing her; satyrs and maenads, five on one side, six on the other, rush up, hop, dance, all except the hindmost satyr, who labours under the weight of a huge wineskin. There are many gay pictures on Little-Master cups, but none more amusing than these, and one would like to know other works by the same hand. The nearest approach is a fragment of a band-cup in Boston, with a warrior about to leave home (pl. 48, 3);[37] two men look on (there must have been others); and the old father raises his voice in a passionate last address; the dog looks up at him.
Our last Little-Master shall be a band-cup in the Louvre (pl. 48, 4–5),[38] on which the picture of Dionysos and Ariadne in the midst of capering satyrs and maenads bears a real resemblance, in conception and composition, to that on the cup in New York, and the two pictures must have been influenced by a common original. The Louvre cup, however, is not by the same painter as the other. It is one of seven fine band-cups by a well-known artist who was not primarily a decorator of cups, the Amasis Painter. The second picture on his cup in the Louvre is a battle-piece, with cavalry in action as well as hoplites. One of his other band-cups represents a Return of Hephaistos which has something in common with the second picture on the New York cup.[39]
This is indeed the place to speak of the Amasis Painter,[40] for the ground has been prepared, first, by what was said of the Heidelberg Painter, and secondly, by our study of Kleitias. He has much in common with the Heidelberg Painter, surpassing him, however, in all respects; a good deal also of Kleitias, if not the finest part, has passed into him—lightness, elegance, and precise technique. The name of Amasis occurs on several vases (including a small fragment without figures), usually followed by the verb epoiesen , "made"; Amasis was the potter. Looking at the decoration we see that the style of drawing is the same in all; the vases must have been painted by one man. He may well have been the same as the potter, but as this is not certain,40bis we call him the Amasis Painter. Many unsigned vases can be attributed to him. A great part of the pleasure one receives from the vases he decorated, whether signed or unsigned, is due to the potter-work, the shape and surface-finish, in fact to Amasis, and the potter Amasis is as clearly defined a personality as the Amasis Painter; he has his own idea of shape, and goes his own way, keeping apart from the majority.
The signed vases are three neck-amphorae of a special model, four jugs of the shape known as olpe, a band-cup, a cup, a sort of small bowl, a pyxis, and a fragment.40ter The signed neck-amphorae are of the broad-shouldered, short-necked class that replaces, in the middle of the sixth century, the ovoid neck-amphora of the second quarter. The best-preserved of the three is in the Paris Cabinet des Médailles (pls. 50–51).[41] The two chief pictures are equally careful. In the more interesting of them, Dionysos stands or moves slowly, holding his kantharos in one hand and raising the other to greet a pair of maenads who dance towards him, closely linked, their
arms round each other's shoulders. Both hold sprigs of ivy, and a pet animal—a hare, a small deer. The nearer one wears a panther-skin over her peplos, and both have necklaces and handsome ear-rings. The female flesh, instead of being white, is reserved, left in outline; this technique is common in early black-figure, unusual later. It occurs, however, from time to time, in other vases by the Amasis Painter, in Lydos, and elsewhere. The picture illustrates both the strength and the weakness of Amasean drawing. The lines, both in the figures and in the pattern-work, are admirably sure, but they are less sensitive and expressive than in Lydos, or, as will be seen, in Exekias. Hands and feet, for example, are not the painter's forte, and neither the movement nor the grouping of the linked maenads is convincing. There is repainting, by the way, in their faces—very little, but just enough to make them look more vacuous than they really are.41bis The picture on the other side is a simple meetingscene: Athena greets Poseidon. The flesh of Athena is in the usual technique, the disadvantage of which is that the white is not perfectly fast; here it had fallen in parts, and the modern restorer felt bound to refresh it. The most attractive piece of drawing on the vase is the small battle-piece on the shoulder; the Amasis Painter is an excellent miniaturist. The combination of large- and small-scale figure-work on the same vase is common in black-figure. The more regular part of the conflict is on the Dionysos side of the vase, five single combats, with little variation; on the left, an unarmed man blows the horn; on the right, an archer flees.[42] On the Athena side, two single combats are flanked on the one part by the pursuit of a warrior who has turned tail; on the other, by a group of three—a warrior falling, a companion to the rescue. The heraldry, as always in our painter, is excellent.
The finer of the two signed neck-amphorae in Boston[43] is incomplete (pl. 49), and the foot has been restored after the other Boston vase. A young warrior receives his armour, while an old man looks on. It is a common subject, but here the persons are named: Achilles, his mother Thetis, and his aged friend Phoinix. This is the original armour of Achilles, the suit which he lent Patroklos and lost, not the replacement suit described in the eighteenth book of the Iliad ; and the scene is doubtless laid at Phthia in Thessaly, not at Troy.[44] A snake supports the crest; a ram's head adorns the cheekpiece of the helmet; the large device on the shield is a lion felling a deer. Leather corslet, greaves, and sword are already worn; a pair of spears completes the outfit. A small fragment of a similar amphora from the Merlo collection at Los Angeles (now Sidney 56.31) has part of a head which is almost a repetition of Thetis's, with a piece of the rare spiral-border above it (pl. 52, 1).[45] The fragmentary picture on the other side of the Boston vase represents the Struggle for the Tripod of Apollo, which Herakles attempts to carry off, while Apollo resists, and Hermes interposes (pl. 49, 2). This is a favourite subject in Attic vase-painting, red-figure as well as black, of the late sixth century and the early fifth; the earliest representation of it, as we have seen, cannot be later than 700,[*] but it does not become common till long after. The more complex drapery and the more substantial figures show that the
[*] See p. 6.
Boston neck-amphora is later than that in the Cabinet des Médailles. Indeed, the drawing of the muscular bodies would point to a date not earlier than the twenties or teens of the sixth century, contemporary with the Leagros Group and the red-figured work of Euphronios and his fellows; in any case this is a very late Amasis Painter. An unusual feature of both Boston vases is that the feet of the figures stand free instead of resting on a ground-line. In the other vase a faint incised line runs round the vase at this point, but it can only have been meant as a guide-line and not to be seen.[46] The omission of the ground-line was perhaps intended to lighten the figures by withdrawing them from the pull of the base.
The slender jug (olpe) in the Louvre may be chosen as an example of the smaller and slighter signed vases (pl. 52, 2–4).[47] The shape is not new; it had been much used by the Gorgon Painter and his companions. The picture is one of many processional or encounter scenes in the work of the Amasis Painter; on the Louvre vase Herakles is escorted by Athena and Hermes, one would have expected into the presence of Zeus, but instead of Zeus there is Poseidon.[48] We leave the signed vases for the present, and look at some of the unsigned pots. An unsigned amphora in New York, a handsome specimen of the canonical shape, has an arming-scene on each side (pl. 53).[49] The moment chosen is the same as in the cup by the Heidelberg Painter (pl. 42, 3)[*] and scores of other vases, the adjustment of the greave. The warrior has slung his sword round him; his helmet is at his feet; the shield, emblazoned with the forepart of a lion, is held ready by a youth, and another youth holds a wreath, perhaps to crown the helmet. There are several spears about, but it is plain that, as in the arming-scene by the Heidelberg Painter, the warrior's spears are the pair held by the woman and youth in front of him, the others merely serving as staves in sixthcentury fashion. The variant on the other side of the vase is less well preserved; the surface is fretted in places and has been retouched. The person facing the warrior is a woman, who holds one of his spears, and also an aryballos, a small round oil-flask. The second spear, and the shield, are held by a youth who stands behind the woman. The helmet is there again, but no sign of a corslet in either picture. This is an early work of the painter, and a good example of his most formal style. The pattern above the picture deserves a word; the painter's floral bands are rather less desiccated than in most of his contemporaries.
The one-piece amphora of this type was invented, as we saw, late in the seventh century, and it lasted into the fifth, but about the middle of the sixth century a somewhat more elaborate variety of it was introduced and soon came to be used for most of the finer work. This is what is called "amphora type A"; in essentials it is the same as the older "type B," differing only in the slightly more complex forms of handles and foot. Amasis made amphorae of type A, but he had his own idea of it, and his version differs from the accepted one. The masterpieces of the Amasis Painter are on three vases of this shape, all unsigned: one in Berlin (pls. 54, 1 and 55, 1), one in
[*] See p. 47.
Würzburg (pls. 54, 2 and 55, 2), and small fragments of a third in Samos (pl. 56, 1–2). The subject on one side of the Berlin vase[50] is again a warrior receiving his armour. A woman faces him holding the spear and the magnificent shield, which is of Boeotian type and is charged with a gorgoneion surrounded by foreparts of horses and lions, the same kind of design as appeared much earlier on the dinos by the Painter of Acropolis 606.[*] The woman's flesh is not white, but reserved like that of the maenads on the neck-amphora in Paris. The head is charming, and so are the sandalled feet. A young man stands beside her, and a warrior follows. On the left, a third warrior is in conversation with a curly-headed youth fully dressed. Although one group consists of four persons, and the other of only two, they are so arranged as not to break up into a two and a four. There are no inscriptions, and one cannot be sure that the warrior is Achilles, the woman Thetis. Above the picture there is a small frieze in miniature. Dionysos is in the middle, listening to a satyr who plays the flute; Ariadne stands behind the satyr. Or rather, Dionysos and Ariadne are thought of as standing together, and the satyr facing them. Satyrs and maenads dance round the trio; we have seen such figures before, but they are always welcome. The minor theme becomes the major on the other side of the vase (pl. 55, 1). Dionysos stands in the middle, satyrs and maenads trip towards him; on each side a couple, satyr and naked maenad with their arms round each other's necks, then a single maenad, clothed. The left-hand woman holds a wreath and a pet hare. The upper part of the right-hand one is missing, but she may have held a pet animal too. The subject recalls the signed vase in the Cabinet des Médailles, but the style is ampler, and there is more life. The flesh of the females is again reserved, not painted white. The small picture above is athletic: boxing, jumping, throwing the javelin.
The amphora of the same shape in Würzburg (pls. 54, 2 and 55, 2) is less well preserved;[51] parts of the surface are damaged and have been repainted.51bis The whole vase is consecrated to Dionysos. There are many ancient representations of the vintage, and sometimes the vintagers are mortals, more often they are satyrs; and here it is satyrs of Amasean breed, fat, hairy, and swine-like, with huge necks, who strip the vine, shoot the grapes into the vat, tread them, water the must, and supply the music. In the small picture above, Dionysos sits, satyrs and maenads dance. The other side of the vase represents, one might say, the first taste of the new wine. Dionysos dances, holding sprigs of ivy, and a kantharos which a satyr fills from a wineskin, looking round at us proudly. A satyr plays the flute, and two others hasten up, their arms round each other's necks, with drinking-horns, one drinking. This is the earliest picture in which Dionysos himself joins in the dance, instead of standing motionless amid the tumult. There is more dancing in the small frieze, with a pair of satyrs in the middle particularly active. The left half is unfortunately in bad condition.
A third amphora, in Samos, must have been of this type and was at least equal to the Würzburg, but only two fragments remain.[52] On the larger we see two groups of
[*] See p. 36.
satyr and naked maenad (pl. 56, 2). One of them is a version of the Amasean group of two figures interlocked; the maenad holds a kantharos in her right hand and with her left grasps the satyr's wrist. At first one thinks of a sprigged skirt, but it is a vinebranch held by the satyr, making a pleasant pattern against the background of the woman's body. The female flesh is again reserved. Behind this couple a satyr lifts a maenad in his arms and embraces her; it is the same sort of group as in the pictures of the Return of Hephaistos on the François vase and on a Caeretan hydria in Vienna.[53] not the least interesting part of the fragment is the huge column-krater standing on the ground in front of the first couple. It is adorned with a group of two figures in incision. Only the legs are preserved, but they suffice to show that this is an example, the earliest known, of a motive that became popular later and inspired some of the masterpieces of red-figure—the satyr stealing up to assault a sleeping nymph.[54] The second fragment of the Samos amphora is from one of the miniature friezes that crowned the pictures (pl. 56, 1). We should have liked more of it. A satyr, who holds a kantharos, has taken a companion on his back and is persuading a donkey to dance; a third satyr, grasping a drinking-horn, encourages him, and a maenad dances a fling.
It seems a long way from this Dionysiac side of the Amasis Painter to the trim, polished compositions of which we have had examples already and which constitute the greater part of his production. We return to these for a moment with an oinochoë in the British Museum which may be chosen as a specimen of the smaller unsigned vases (pl. 57, 1).[55] The time-honoured symmetrical design of the four-horse chariot seen from the front, here with a young driver standing in the car and holding the goad, while a man and a naked youth look on. The same design is repeated with variations on the fragment of a small bowl by the same painter in Palermo (pl. 56, 3),[56] and twice on the two sides of his fragmentary amphora in Bonn (pl. 57, 2).[57] The artist is fond of the formal yet strange old composition, and in the Bonn vase he has retained an early trait which must count as a deliberate archaism: the long dank manes of which we have spoken so often were no longer fashionable either in art or in life.
We began our study of the Amasis Painter with a cup and we conclude it with a few others. Several band-cups of his remain, but no lip-cup. His early cup in the Louvre (pl. 58, 1),[58] with riders and youths, and at the handles lions, has the upper part of a lip-cup, but the thick-stemmed foot is of Siana type, while the position and character of the figure-work—many figures, and in the handle-zone—points forward to the band-cup. It is an experimental piece, and might even be called a hybrid. Another cup in the Louvre (pl. 58, 2), with courting scenes, has something of the band-cup, but belongs to a special class of which only a few remain.[59] A curious late cup in Boston (pl. 59, 1–2)[60] is of the new type A (which will be discussed in our next chapter), except that the thick fillet between bowl and stem is omitted. The decoration on one side, a siren with the body in the form of a large eye—or a large eye stuffed out to make a siren—occurs occasionally elsewhere, but taken with the effrontery of the picture on the other half, it almost makes one fancy that the artist is
parodying the new type of cup. More attractive are the signed cup in the Vatican (pls. 58, 3, 59, 3, and 60, 3) and two unsigned of similar form in Oxford (pl. 60, 1 and 4) and Florence (pl. 60, 2).[61] In these Amasis has almost achieved the beautiful cup of 'type B' which was invented in the late sixth century and became the dominant type in red-figure painting. The bowl, lipless, passes into the stem with a gradual curve; move the punctuating fillet from the base of the stem to near the edge of the foot-plate and you have cup B. The foot-plate of the Vatican cup is as in type A, but in the Oxford cup it is already of torus form as in type B. The external decoration consists of a single figure in each half (in the Vatican cup flanked by eyes), and a floral motive at each handle. As in the Boston neck-amphorae, the figures have no ground-line to stand on: further, the whole stem is reserved instead of being black. A very light-coloured cup. Inside, the Vatican cup has a small gorgoneion (pl. 60, 3), the Oxford cup is black save for a small circle and dot. It is not so much the figures and patterns, pretty though they are, that make these cups so pleasant, as the fine shape and proportions, the colour and satin-like sheen of the clay—the work, in fact, of the master-potter Amasis.