Cleveland
28.660
Attic Red-Figure Lekythos
The Oionokles Painter
ca. 480-470 B.C.
Lent by the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Charles W. Harkness
Endowment Fund, 1928 (28.660).
The Vase: h. 43.6 cm; d. of lip 7.5
cm; d. of body 14.4 cm; d. of foot 9.5 cm. Broken and repaired. The lekythos has
no false interior. It is of standard shape, type 2, with the neck set off from
mouth and shoulder by flange and fillet, and a band, tooled above and below,
joining body and foot. The side of the disk foot is reserved, and grooved around
the upper edge. Inside, the mouth is black. The top of the lip is reserved, the
mouth, neck, handle and upper surface of the foot are black.
Decoration: Egg and dot pattern
ring the neck. The shoulder floral is reserved: a central pendent palmette, the
tendrils bounding it each ending in a single spiral and giving off a lotusbud;
tendrils on each side originating near the heart of the central palmette
encircle the palmettes in which they terminate. Bands of meander and
cross-square bound the picture above and below, each consisting of three stopped
meanders to right, interrupted above by two black-filled cross-squares (an extra
meander at the right was mostly covered by the black background), below by a
dotted saltire-square and a cross-square.
A bearded warrior, his hair braided in back, prepares to cut off a
forelock with his sword. In front of him his equipage is piled on and against a
folding stool: a shield, seen in three-quarter view so that the inside webbing
and tassels show, a spear, leaning in counterpoint to the angle at which the
warrior stands, its point cut off by the border, a Thracian helmet set on top of
a folded cloak, both laid on top of a cushion covering the seat of the stool.
The warrior wears a cuirass with leather flaps over a short, finely pleated
chiton, and greaves; his scabbard is slung at his left side from a strap across
his body. There is a fillet around his hair, and tassels hanging from the
scabbard and lower back edges of his greaves, all done in red paint. Anatomical
details are worked on the greaves and on the cuirass, the leather flaps of which
are covered with scales. The helmet is decorated with a palmette in front, a
lion in black on the cheek-flap and a cross in the neck-piece; the crest is
attached to the helmet by a checkered ridge. The cushion on the stool is woven
or embroidered with rows of zigzags, the stool itself has animal legs attached
to the seat by large bosses decorated with crosses. There is much play of dark
and light in the composition. There is relief contour almost everywhere. For a
full description, see C. G. Boulter in
CVA, from which much of the above is taken.
Identical and meaningless inscriptions are painted in red on each
side of the warrior, reading vertically (see
CVA).
The Oionokles Painter is called after a kalos name (once read
Dionokles) which has so far appeared only on vases by him. He was a follower of
the Providence Painter and his extant produce, like that of the Providence
Painter and other students and followers of the Berlin Painter, comprises mostly
Nolan amphorae and lekythoi (compare
St. Louis WU
3271). But there is evidence, in a series of small neck-amphorae, and
through the text and handwriting of certain inscriptions, that the Oinokles
Painter worked at one time for the same potter as a cup painter who belonged to
the circle of the Brygos Painter, the Briseis Painter (
Caskey & Beazley, ii, 3 f). Meaningless
inscriptions like the ones on the Cleveland lekythos occur on vases by both
painters (
ibid).
Like the Providence Painter and his fellows, the Oionokles Painter
did numerous pursuit scenes, but this quiet scene is his most well-known. It is
cited often for the subject matter, which has long been related to fuller
pictures showing an episode in the story of the Seven Against Thebes (see also
Chicago 1922.2197). The Seven who fought
against Thebes are said to have fastened locks of their hair to the chariot of
the Argive leader Adrastos before the battle as mementos to be taken back should
they perish. Among the vases showing the subject, an inscription on one gives
the name of the hair-cutter as Parthenopaios, one of the Seven (son of Atlanta,
for whom see
Cleveland 66.114). There is only
one other painting, like this, with the single figure of a hair-cutter, a white
ground lekythos in New York by the Painter of the Yale Lekythos
ARV2, 660, no. 71). The New York warrior,
like the Cleveland one, has a Thracian helmet. Both have been identified with,
at least shown to have been inspired by, representations of Parthenopaios.
C. G. Boulter (
CVA) has
given a number of interesting parallels for representations of folded cloaks
like the one here, and has noted the elaborate webbing inside the shield, and
the triangle of St. Andrews crosses made by the fastenings of the stool together
with the one on the neck-guard of the helmet (an echo of which may perhaps be
seen in the crossed fastenings of the scabbard). The warrior's braided hair was
fashionable in the art of the time. It is shown often in vase-paintings, for
example on the name-piece of the Achilles Painter (
ARV2, 987, no. 1), and on sculpture of the period,
such as the so-called Blond Boy, of which type there is a marble head in The
Cleveland Museum of Art (
Ridgway 1970,
59).
Compare this lekythos and the red-figure one by Douris,
Cleveland 78.59, also from Cleveland. They are
nearly contemporary, and of the same shape type, though there are differences in
proportion and subsidiary decoration. Both show a similar interest in details of
armor, in perspective, and in the contrast of light and dark areas. The
Oionokles Painter has employed the same sort of detailing on clothing and armor
in his rendering of a Persian warrior on a Nolan amphora (
Berlin F 2331,
ARV2,
646, no. 7).
For a discussion of haircutting scenes, a list of such, and further
bibliography, see
Dusenbery, infra, p. 227ff. The shoulder floral,
common on red-figure lekythoi, is designated "type IB" and described by
Kurtz 1975, 33.
Bibliography
Beazley 1933a, 28, no.
79;
Haspels 1936, 73f;
ARV1, 439, no. 32;
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Classical Art, Handbook (1961) pl. 6 (cover);
ARV2, 648, no. 37;
Caskey & Beazley, iii 40;
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Handbook (1966) 20;
ASCSA 1971, no. 35;
CVA, USA 15, Cleveland I, pl. 31 and pp.
2off;
J. Boardman, "Heroic
Haircuts," Classical Quarterly 23 (1973)
196, n. 5;
Kunisch,
"Parthenopaios" AntK 17(1974) 39 and pl.
8, 1;
F. Brommer in Gnomon 46(1974) 427 (on provenance);
K. Schefold, "Sophokles' Aias auf
einer Lekythos," AntK 19(1976) 75;
E.B. Dusenbery, "Two Attic Red-figured
Kraters in Samothrace," Hesperia 47
(1978) 228, n. 55;
Boardman
1975, p. 195, fig. 361.
L.B.
