Warren G. Moon, Greek Vase-Painting in Midwestern Collections

Dayton 63.84

Lent by The Dayton Art Institute; Museum Purchase (63.84).

Ex collection Fallani, Rome.

The Vase: h. 30.1 cm; max. d. 21.6; d. of mouth 15.2 cm; d. of foot 12.7 cm. Mended from many fragments, a few small portions filled with plaster and in-painting, design intact. Added white on Side B is nearly all modern as is half of the white on Side A. The top of the lip is reserved; the interior of the neck is entirely glazed; on the interior of the neck two red lines, one at the top and another midway down. The three-ribbed handles have some black overpaint; the underside of the foot is reserved. Raised red fillet, incised above and below.

Decoration: Side A: man and youth in chariot. The man, a charioteer, bearded, wears the long robe (since geometric times traditional in the profession) and around his waist, an uncommon addition, a chap designed like a nebris. The charioteer holds the reins, his companion the kentron. The youth wears a banded garment which, toward the bottom, the artist forgot to finish. In front of the car and facing it to the left is a couple, an older man in himation, carrying a staff in his right hand, and a woman in himation, with a band of curls in red, across her forehead. A man in a banded himation sits on a stool at the head of the team. One horse is white and the steed closest to us, on his crouper, has a brand-a circle of tiny dots with a dot at the center (see Minneapolis Inst. 57.1). The tack is shown with more than usual detail. Added red: fillets in the couple's hair; bands on himation; manes, breastbands and tails of horses. Added white (as restored): horse; charioteer's robe; man's hair; woman's flesh; knobs on stool; brand. Side B. Apollo playing the kithara to two women, one on either side of him. Each woman gestures to Apollo with outsized hands, as restored. They wear the peplos, banded, and Apollos the himation. Their garments have decorated borders and, for the woman on the left, the artist has added a dot-cluster to her peplos, near the foot. These ladies, like the one on Side A, have a distinctive row of red curls across the forehead. Added red: fillets in the hair of all three; curls of women; bands on clothing. Added white (as restored): female flesh; arms of kithara. Florals: lotus and palmette chain: red dots on the cuff and central petal of lotuses, and a dot for hearts of palmettes. Tongue-patterns at the base of the neck, alternately red and black. Other subsidiary decoration (infra).

The painter was identified by Dietrich von Bothmer and recognized by Beazley (Para., 144, bottom). Only two vases, both neck-amphorae with distinctive features of potting, have formally been assigned. Both amphorae are rather small and Beazley said of them in a letter to the museum, "the shape is not quite ordinary, with its shortish neck, reserved side of foot, and spreading handles. The patterns are nearly the same in both, and the drawing of horses and people." The companion neck-amphora is at Boston, Boston 76.40 (Para., 144, no. 1) and its shape was studied and diagrammed long ago (Caskey 1922, 46, no. 9). The measurements of the vases are close — 29.8 cm. h. and 20.2 cm. max. d. — which demonstrates the control and skill of the Greek potter. The Boston necker, as Beazley quipped, shows similarly on its obverse: a youth and a man in a chariot, a warrior facing the chariot with an old man behind and, finally, a second warrior standing at the head of the team. One sees the same white horse, and the old man again carries a staff and has snowy hair. On the reverse, a lusty scene, more interesting than Dayton's: Dionysos and Ariadne stand under a cloak as one, on either side a satyr-surprisingly not aroused-attacks a maenad. The satyr on the right has the woman stripped naked, off the ground and into his arms; he moves toward a couch. The painter liked added color; as a design, the naked woman is a vast area of white. The duo on the left is amorously less far along. Dionysos' himation, like Apollo's on Side B, is bordered at the bottom with waved incisions and Ariadne has the familiar row of red curls.

The florals are the same, vase to vase, as is, for the most part, other subsidiary decoration; directly beneath the picture a band of meanders (moving to the right), bounded above and below by a pair of thin lines; next a row of plump lotus buds joined alternately top and bottom; under the lotuses another row of meanders like the first, framed similarly; lastly, rays. There is one difference in these schemes: the lotus bud chain on the Boston vase has an additional series of dots in black glaze, one in each loop of the tendrils, beneath the buds.

Preceding his entries for the Dayton Painter in Paralipomena, Beazley remarks, "the horses resemble those of the Euphiletos Painter," who himself decorates a few atypical neck-amphorae (ABV, 323, nos. 18-21). The Euphiletos Painter also decorates two special hydriai for the potter Pamphaios (Paris, Cab. Méd. 254: ABV, 324, no. 38; London B 300: ABV, 324, no. 39; for a vase signed by Pamphaios in this exhibition, see Oberlin 67.61), who was a younger companion of the potter Nikosthenes. Perhaps in this ambit the Euphiletos Painter experimented with white ground, on the side of the mouth of a good hydria in Munich (Munich 1703: ABV, 324, no. 26), which displays in its main panel short wiry horses close in style to those on the obverses of the Dayton Painter's neck-amphorae. Paris, Cab. Méd. 254 (supra: Hoppin 1924, 304) is like these Dayton Painter vases in another way; for a hydria it bears an unusual amount of subsidiary decoration: wave patterns (rounded half dog-tooth) around the mouth, dicing on the lower neck, dicing framing the shoulder panel at the sides, wave patterns (rounded half dog-tooth) separating the panels, lotus and palmette chains at the sides of the main panel and, under this panel, a band of meanders running to the right, bounded top and bottom by a pair of thin lines.

Bibliography

W.G.M.