The latest of the paintings reproduced on this plate. To be dated, by the rendering of the eye and the back, at the beginning of the ripe archaic period, i.e. about 500 B.C. Assigned by Beazley to the group of the Triptolemos painter.
12
ARV, p. 244, no. 16 (Triptolemos Painter);
ARV2, p. 366, no. 83;
CVA, Tübingen, 5, p. 27, under no. S./10 1367 (J. Burow).
Exhibited: The Brockton Art Center-Fuller Memorial, Sept. 4, 1975-July 1977 (
S. K. Morgan, 1975, The Ancient Mediterranean, The Brockton Art Center-Fuller Memorial, in cooperation with the MFA, Boston, p. 23, no. 15, fig. 5); Utah Museum of Fine Arts, 1988-1991 (
Padgett 1988, pp. 24-25, no. 10, illus.); Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, 1991-.
14. 13.195 LEKYTHOS Cows led to sacrifice PLATE IV
Height, 0.31 m.; diameter, 0.124 m. Broken, but repaired without appreciable injury to the picture. The neck of the lekythos, the top of the lip, and the edge of the upper member of the foot reserved. On the shoulder, below a tongue pattern, black palmettes in three groups, with single ivy-leaves in the field. Relief contours throughout. The hair contours reserved. Red used for the wreaths of the two youths, the branches they hold, the halters of the cows, the tassel at the end of the woman's fillet, the fillet tied about the column, two bands encircling the vase below the reserved ground line of the picture. The streamers hanging from the cows' horns are of alternate red and white tufts. The faint inner markings in brown are indicated in the drawing, which is, however, to be corrected in two particulars: the three wavy tresses showing against the woman's neck are not painted, but indented: they belong to the preliminary sketch, and should therefore have been omitted. The same remark applies to the line indicating the jaw of the first youth.
From Gela.
Ann. Rep. 1913, p. 90. Beazley,
V.A., p. 26. Hoppin, i, p. 462, no. 1. Pfuhl, i, p. 429. Jacobsthal,
Ornamente griechischer Vasen, Pl. 54 a. The shape is given in Hambidge,
Dyn. Sym., p. 131, fig. 10, and Caskey,
G.G.V., p. 212, no. 166.
The picture, which covers most of the circumference of the lekythos, shows a gay festal procession advancing towards a sacred precinct indicated by an Ionic column. Preceded by a woman bearing a large, high-handled ceremonial basket on her head, two youths are leading two cows to the sacrifice. The kanephoros has her head bound by a broad fillet with a red tassel at its end, and she is richly garbed in an Ionic chiton embroidered with crosses and a large himation. Two ends of this are laid over the woman's shoulders and hang almost to the ground in elaborate, symmetrically arranged zigzag folds. But the artist has failed to visualize this arrangement of the drapery, for some of the folds begin at the shoulders, others below the sleeves of the chiton (as if the mantle were hanging behind the arms), while the pinned upper edges of the sleeves are shown from neck to elbow. The mantle of Anakreon on the lekythos by the same painter, referred to below, is worn in the same way; but in this case its folds are correctly carried up over the shoulder. The sacrificial basket with three high loop-handles is familiar from many vase paintings as well as from terra-cotta models.
3 The youths are wreathed, and wear mantles disposed so as to leave the right arm and shoulder bare. They carry branches (
θαλλοὶ), the first in his left, the second in both hands. The halters (or possibly one long rope) tied about the horns of the cows are held in the raised right hand of the first youth and in the left hand of the second. Long streamers composed of tufts of red and white wool hang from the victims' horns. The Ionic column, set on a nondescript two-stepped base and having a plinth below the volutes of its capital, is decorated for the festival with a red fillet tied about its shaft.
4 The space below the handle of the lekythos, between the two ends of the
