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

Detroit 63.13

Lent by the Detroit Institute of Arts; Gift of the Founders Society, Membership Fund (63.13). Spink and Sons, sale, June 24, 1936. Ex Collection William Randolph Hearst, no. SSW 12274. Parke-Bernet Galleries, sale, April 5 and 6, 1963.

The Vase: h. 35.5 cm; d. of mouth 10.6 cm; d. of rim 14.7 cm; max. d. of body 30.0 cm at 20.0 cm from base; d. of foot 13.2 cm. Broken and repaired, with some patching on the neck about the vertical handle. Restored: a large section below figures to left of center; feet of figures 2 and 3 from left; lower parts of garments, and feet of figures 4, 5 and 6 from left; lower right part of fountain platform; part of lotus pattern at left. There are spots of retouching on all figures. The wash covering the reserved areas has fired a sort of greenish-orange. Horizontal brush strokes are visible on the lower part of the body, vertical ones near the picture. The hydria is of kalpis shape, with a smooth curve running from neck to foot. The picture is set on the shoulder between the body-handles and just above them, extending a little beyond the near root on each side. The black of the vase outside the picture zone is emphasized by narrow areas left reserved: the surface and underside of the rim, a strip around the bottom of the foot, the inside of each horizontal handle, and a band on the vase between the roots of each. The vertical handle is all black; the sides and upper edge of the rim are black; mouth and neck are black inside to a depth of 3.0 cm; the body is reserved inside. A narrow band bordered by tooled grooves joins body to torus-shaped foot; the underside of the foot is reserved. Red painted lines encircle the upper edge of the rim inside, the neck, the outside edge of the foot. Below the picture a band of linked lotusbuds binds handle to handle, as the reserved areas of the handle-zones bind handle to vase and root to root. The picture is framed by a band of lotusbuds above, at the sides a double row of netted dots (pomegranates in origin), and a reserved line below which serves as a ground line.

Decoration: The scene shows the vase itself, a water jar, in use: men and women at a fountain. Are the men here bartering for women or water? At the right a woman stands before a fierce lion-head spout, holding a round object, perhaps a sponge, in her hand. A stream of water, done in red paint, issues from the lion's mouth. Below the spout a hydria-kalpis sits on a stepped platform. Another woman walks carefully away from the fountain, looking back at it and balancing a small pointed hydria on her head. The little hydria cuts into the lotus-pattern above the picture, but the painter had forgotten to stop for it when drawing the line bordering the lotus below. In the center of the scene a bearded man, holding up a red painted flower, leans on his walking stick and talks with a woman whose hydria, of black-figure shape, stands on the ground between them; in her left hand is some object rendered by a red-painted dot. At the right, a woman with an empty hydria on her head walks toward the fountain while rejecting the advances of a bearded man behind her. The men have short hair wreathed with leaves, which are neatly painted in red. The central man's hair hangs in curly fringes over his neck. Two of the women have their long hair bound up in a krobylos, a sort of pony-tail, the bow tied under it. The woman with the hydria on her head also wears a wreath done in red paint. One woman lets her hair down her back but ties up the ends in a knot, one has hers covered with a sakkos or headcloth. The bands and knots are all done in red paint. All the women wear chitons with flowing sleeves, two have cloaks draped over their shoulders; all wear drop earrings; all wear a single pendant or amulet on a necklace. The men are swathed neck to foot in himatia.

Thin glaze was used for fringes of hair, pleats of chiton sleeves and fastenings, necklaces, dots decorating sakkos, neck-muscles of the man at center, moustache of the man at left. It looks as though a very fine relief line was used everywhere; in some places it appears to have modern reinforcements. Extensive sketching is visible everywhere.

Fountain scenes, so appropriate to the use of the vase, are more common on the black-figure hydriai of a generation earlier. These black-figure hydriai with the picture surfaces defined by an articulated shoulder and body were well-suited to the vertical compositions of water-bearers and columns (cf. Toledo 1961.23). There are some red-figure hydriae of this shape and there are some black-figure hydriae of the kalpis shape, like the Detroit one (cf. also Champaign 70.8.4), but the kalpis, its body formed by unbroken curves, is a development of the red-figure period (It is a modern convention to confine the term to this shape). The earliest have the picture on the shoulder. This scheme remains popular, though later, as the hydria body grows taller and slimmer, the picture moves back down the vase (cf. Chicago 1911.456). Hydriai of both shapes are shown in the vase-painting here.

Only four other hydriai have been attributed to the Pig Painter and at least three of these are late. The Detroit hydria was done relatively early in the Pig Painter's career. The painter takes his name from the picture of a swineherd on a pelike in Cambridge, England. Beazley first called him the See-Saw Painter after a fragment in Boston (Beazley 1918, 118), but later gave that piece instead to the Leningrad Painter and changed the name. He was a student of Myson, and one of the earliest members of the Mannerist workshop (see Detroit 24.120 and Chicago 1889.16). Beazley considered the possibility that the Pig Painter "might even be Myson in his later years" (Museum Journal, University of Pennsylvania 23 [1932-33]33). But, though Myson taught the earlier Mannerists, his column kraters are not shop-shape, there are no extant hydriai by him, and he painted various shapes which were not taken up by his students. Also, there are differences in personality between the painters, which argue for two individuals. The Detroit hydria was painted when the artist was still working "in the manner of Myson" (ARV1 and ARV2, infra) and before, but I think not too long before, he was exposed to strong influence from the Pan Painter, who was possibly Myson's student though not a member of the shop. Compare with the figures on the Detroit vase those of the women on the obverse of a column krater by Myson in Küsnacht (Para., 349, no. 29 bis). Compare also the head of a man on a fragment by the Pig Painter in Adria (ARV2, 564, no. 25). Two works which are very close to the one in Detroit are by artists who worked in the manner of the Pig Painter: a pelike in Adolphseck and a fragment in Naples (ARV2, 566, nos. 6 and 9).

The band of lotusbuds is a normal part of the subsidiary decoration for red-figure column kraters, and column kraters were the principal product of the Mannerist shop, so it is not surprising to find lotus decorating other shapes from that shop as well (cf. University of Chicago 1967.115.68). The Pig Painter even used it on the necks of two early amphorae (ARV2, 565, nos. 38 and 39) — odd for red-figure neck-amphorae.

There are two column kraters by the Pig Painter, Cleveland 24.197, somewhat later than the Detroit hydria, and Cleveland 26.549, later still, showing the influence of the Pan Painter (ARV2, 564, nos. 18 and 563, no. 9). There is a hydria from the Mannerist shop, by the Agrigento Painter, Minneapolis 47.34, a fragment of one by the same painter at The University of Chicago (ARV2, 579, nos. 83 and 86), and a Mannerist hydria in Minneapolis, Minneapolis 73.10.11.

For hydriai, cf. the references given in the entry for Toledo 1961.23; for the kalpis, see M. Robertson in AJA 62 (1958) 66, in n. 83 to p. 65; for hydriai from the Mannerist workshop, L. G. Eldridge, "An Unpublished Calpis," AJA 21 (1917) 38-54.

Bibliography

Louise Berge