Cleveland
75.1
Attic Black-Figure Hydria
The Antimenes Painter
ca. 520 B.C.
(Not exhibited) The Cleveland Museum of Art J.H. Wade Fund Purchase
(75.1) Ex collection Tessin, Switzerland.
The Vase: h. 42.2 cm; d. of lip
24.7 cm; d. of base 15.5 cm; max. d. 29.7 cm, with handles 37.6 cm. Complete:
reconstituted from several large fragments; some minor plaster fill and some
very minor in-painting. Interior of neck and underside of lip well glazed;
insides of side handles and portion of the vase body opposite are reserved.
Decoration:
Main panel: frontal quadriga flanked by two
hoplites. A driver and warrior have already mounted the chariot whose horses
appear alert and anxious. The faces of two hoplites-like the chariot itself-are
shown frontally, a somewhat unusual feature at this time. The driver wears a
fashionable headband and long robe which is traditional for the profession; he
holds the reins and goad (kentron). The hoplite in the chariot carries two
lances-reminiscent of heroic times-and wears a low-crested Corinthian helmet as
does his companion standing to the right. The third wears the high-crested
version. The "spectator" hoplites wear baldrics for sword and quiver, and carry
lances and shields: device on the left a tripod, on the right, an octopus.
Added red: chariot car, horses' manes and
tails, tops of greaves, fillets, various bands on helmet-crests, folds of
chitoniskoi, dot on shield of warrior on left; flair on bottom of breast plates
and dot in their upper center.
Added white:
charioteer's robe, shield emblems (now faded).
Shoulder: Theseus slaying the Cretan Minotaur with two youths and two
maidens looking on. Theseus, his sword in hand, holds the Minotaur at arm's
length; the monster defends himself with rocks.
Added red: hair of nude youths, stripes on maidens' peploi and on
Theseus' chiton and numerous dots on Minotaur's neck.
Added white: women's flesh and Minotaur's rocks.
Predella: two lions attack a doe while a stag
grazes on either side.
Added red: necks of
animals and daubs on the haunch of the stag on the far right. A red band runs
around the vase beneath the predella, and the hearts of the palmettes at either
end of this little register are also red. Alternate red and black
tongue-patterns at the base of neck; double palmette-lotus-chains frame the main
panel on either side.
This exceptionally well-preserved hydria is among the finest vases of
this painter who was named by Beazley after a love inscription on a hydria in
Leyden (
JHS 47 [1927] 63-92;
ABV, 266, no. 1). Comparing aspects of
the rendition of the warriors here, especially their frontal pose, with the
warrior in the center of Side B on Psiax' red-figured eye-cup from the same
museum, also shown frontally, one can readily understand why the Antimenes
Painter was called by Beazley the "`Brother' of Psiax" (
ABV, 266, with additional bibliography). The hands of
the charioteer on this hydria, and the reins which he holds are beautifully
incised and the care given these details is possibly unexampled in his extant
vases. The human heads seen frontally are always rare in vase-painting and for
the Antimenes Painter only one parallel comes to mind, the charioteer on a neck
amphora from Vulci, now in the Royal Ontario Museum,
Toronto 303 (
ABV, 272,
no. 100). In Attic vase-painting, perhaps the first painter to
experiment with frontal depictions of quadrigas was the Gorgon Painter (
Athens, Acr. 474:
ABV, 8, no. 2), and in sculpture, contemporary with
this Cleveland hydria, the pediments of the temple of Apollo at Delphi show
Apollo, Artemis and Leto in frontal chariots. A vase by the Taleides Painter
(
Louvre CP 10655:
CVA, France Louvre 11, pl. 138.4) in its composition
may be something by way of prototype for the shoulder scene on this hydria but
this is uncertain.
Like many of his contemporaries at the end of the sixth century B.C.,
the Antimenes Painter was influenced by the revolutionary new style of the
red-figure vase-painters. Artists of this new style sought to depict human
beings in more realistic and active poses, often foreshortening and twisting
their bodies, and increasing their size and bulk. In addition to a few
practitioners experimenting with space such as we see on this hydria,
black-figure artists mostly responded to this impetus with increasingly more
complex treatment of detail. Here the various incisions, the unusually delicate
detail of the charioteer's hands, the more studied and faithful treatment of the
chariot box, and the larger human and equine forms crowding the limited space,
reflect these new red-figure innovations. Thus, the Cleveland hydria may
evidence a loosening of the Antimenes Painter's style, and an added interest in
filling space with unified, heavier compositions, which kept his black-figure
pottery desirable for a clientele with a taste for the old-fashioned in a period
of growing demand for red-figure.
1
Bibliography
Das Tier
in der Antike Archäologischen Institut der
Universität, Zürich (21 September-17 November 1974) no.
225;
B. Kathman, "A Trio of Late
Black-Figure Vase-Painters," CMA Bulletin
66 (February 1979) 49-54, figs. 1, 2 and 4.
Barbara Kathman, The Cleveland Museum of Art
