Cone Collection (Moon No. 78)
Attic Black-Figure Neck-Amphora
Kleophrades Painter
ca. 500 B.C.
Lent by Gay H. Cone, Webster's Grove, St. Louis. Ex collections D. M.
Robinson and George Mylonas.
The Vase: h. 41.3 cm; w. 27.8 cm;
d. of base 7.7 cm; d. of neck 9.0 cm. Mended from several large fragments, with
a large triangular patch in plaster on B across maenad's body. Section of lip
repaired; minor chips and surface abrasion. The inside of the neck is glazed and
there is a reserved line near the top. Top of rim, insides of handles and
underside of foot reserved. The handles are triple-ribbed. Tongue-patterns,
alternately red and black, at base of neck; rays above foot; under handles,
palmette fans on spidery tendrils, with pointed lotusbud and diamond enclosure,
dotted, at the center of the arrangement. Lotus chain under picture connected at
every other position on top. In pencil, under foot: E 8698.
Decoration:
Side A: a scene in Hades, with Hermes,
Cerberus and Sisyphos. Hermes, wearing his usual dress of chlamys, petasos and
winged boots, carries the kerykeion in his right hand and gestures to Sisyphos
with his left. Sisyphos, waging eternal battle with the rock, turns toward
Hermes. Cerberus scrutinizes Hermes with one head, Sisyphos with the other. The
gates of Hades are represented architecturally, with unfluted Doric columns
which divide the scene in two. The columns have echinus and abacus, and the
architrave, which is above only one column, is accentuated by a broad, white
stripe. There are two pairs of incised annulets under the echinus; between
these, on the upper part of one column, there are three zigzags.
Added red: fillet in Hermes' hair, his beard and the wings
on his boots; Cerberus' mane has alternate red and white tufts; Sisyphos' beard,
fillet, border on chiton.
Added white:
Cerberus' teeth and mane; architrave; border on Sisyphos' rock.
Side B: a party of three revelers
(komasts). The woman, perhaps a maenad, moves to the right
and wears an animal-skin
(nebris); two bearded
men, clothed around the waist, both walk to the right, one on either side of
her. The maenad has turned back to look at the companion who carries the wine
skin; the man in front of her has a knobby staff in his right hand.
Added red: ivy wreaths (alternate leaves),
beards, dots and thin stripes on woman's garment, wine-skin.
Added white: woman's flesh.
Only four complete black-figure neck-amphorae by this painter have
survived; a neck-amphora from Vulci, now
Wü
rzburg L 222 (
ABV, 405, no.
20), is closest in style to the St. Louis vase. Side A bears a kitharode
between columns, the architectural features of which and the manner in which
they divide the scene recall those between Hermes and Sisyphos. Side B of the
Würzburg vase depicts a maenad on a donkey with Dionysos along side: the
position of Dionysos with back-turned head and legs apart duplicates the
attitude of Sisyphos. The shape and position of the palmette fans and the
fibrous wire-like tendrils on which the fans are perched are comparable; the
Würzburg neck-amphora has a predella of lions and boars while Mrs. Cone's
vase does not. On the fragment of the neck-amphora,
Frankfort B 286, ivy branches separate Dionysos and Hephaistos as the
columns had on the other neck-amphorae. Whether this fragment is by the
Kleophrades Painter or a pupil, figure-style, composition and subsidiary
decoration are close.
The Kleophrades Painter's neck-amphorae were probably decorated in
the same early period of his career as the calyx-krater at
Harvard 1960.236 (
ARV2,
185, no. 31). On this krater, satyrs struggle to lift bulky, weighty
objects — an enormous volute krater for instance — as Sisyphos
does with his rock. Beazley called this krater "very early" and the satyrs are
given bodies with little musculature, long arms and rounded shoulders comparable
to the rendition of the komasts and Sisyphos. Sisyphos' pose is nearly identical
to that of a komast, who is the central figure on Side B of an amphora type A
(
Würzburg L 507:
ARV2, 181, no. 1), another vase which is called "very
early." The figure directly behind this komast recalls the reveller carrying the
wine-skin on Side B of Mrs. Cone's vase.
The Kleophrades Painter was a noteworthy vase decorator and his
talents, by virtue of the quantity of his work which has survived, must have
been in great demand. As often occurs to meet demand, an artist will depend upon
fixed types and formulate. One need only compare the figure of Sisyphos —
moving to the right, legs apart, frontal chest, carrying a large object, head
turned back — to the reveller on the other side of the very same vase.
Perhaps his persistence in using such figural types was something of a dodge
from dealing with the third dimension in a studied and consistent way. This he
attempts later in some of his red-figure work, e.g. back view of Ajax on Side A
of an amphora type A (
Würzburg L 508:
ARV2, 182, no. 5) and in these
efforts he recalls his mentor, Euthymides.
At one time Hauser (
JHS 30 [1910] 38-68) and other scholars
believed the work of the Kleophrades Painter to have been a later stage of the
great Euthymides himself (
Hoppin 1917,
40). Beazley attributed two of the Kleophrades Painter's neck-amphorae
—
Würzburg L 222 (
ABV, 405, no. 20) and
New York 41.162.189 (
ABV, 405, no. 17) — to the Eucharides Painter, a pupil of the
Nikoxenos Painter who worked both in black and red-figure ("Panathenaica,"
AJA 47 [1943]
447). Eucharides and Kleophrades Painters decorate a large number of
black-figure Panathenaic prize-vases in the late sixth and early fifth century.
Although we call him the Kleophrades Painter — after the potter's name
"Kleophrades" on a cup in the Cabinet des Médailles (
ARV2, 181) — his actual name is known. The
painter signs Epiktetos
ΕΓΡΑΦΣΕΝ on both sides of a red-figure pelike,
Berlin F 2170 (
ARV2, 185, no. 28).
1 This vase is late in his career and of so little artistic merit that the
conventional name has stuck. His three-figure compositions and his delight with
komasts and revellers, among other aspects, prove the Kleophrades Painter's
interaction, not only with Euthymides but with the Eucharides Painter. In this
regard one need only compare the komasts on the Cone neck-amphora with figures
on Side A of the pelike by the Eucharides Painter in this exhibition (
University of Chicago 1967.115.68). Other
practitioners, contemporary to the Kleophrades Painter, have similar
compositions and figure-style and designed both in black and red-figure: the
Dikaios Painter, the Troilos Painter and the Goettingen Painter. The latter's
column krater, once on the Paris market (
ARV2,
235, no. 9), is especially close; on Side A a fellow leans over a
laver or basin.
Scenes of Hades and the particular treatment on this vase have
recently been discussed:
JDI 73 (1958) 48ff (with other
bibliography). The Cone neck-amphora is rare in that Kore or Persephone is not
depicted (see
Toledo 1950.261, shoulder).
Bibliography
ABV, 405, no. 19;
Brommer 1973, 550, no. 9;
Para., 176, no. 19;
D.M. Robinson, "Unpublished Greek Vases in
the Robinson Collection," AJA 60 (1956)
15-16 and pls. 12-13;
K.
Schauenburg, "Die Totengötter in der Unteritalischen
Vasenmalerei," JDI 73 (1958)
50.
W.G.M.
