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A Neo-Attic Krater in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Gisela M. A. Richter
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Extract

The Metropolitan Museum has recently acquired a marble Neo-Attic krater of exceptional beauty in an excellent state of preservation. It has been briefly described in the Metropolitan Museum Bulletin for January 1924; but since its importance requires a fuller publication and its study brings up interesting stylistic considerations, I am glad of this opportunity for a fuller discussion.

The vase is of the bell-krater shape with overhanging lip and fluted bottom and two horizontal handles emerging from Satyr heads—evidently a favourite form with Neo-Attic sculptors of the first century, for we have a number of examples of it. The foot was worked in a separate piece and is missing; at the bottom of the vase is a marble tenon with a smoothed surface round it, indicating the width of the foot at the point of attachment. We have added a plaster foot, and restored the rim, which was much chipped.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , 1925 , pp. 201 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1925

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References

1 Height without foot or tenon 20 5/16 in. (51·6 cm.); height with restored foot 31¾ in. (80·6 cm.); diameter at top after restoration of lip 28¾ in. (73 cm.); height of tenon ⅞ in. (2·2 cm.).

2 Cf., besides Reinach, Répertoire des Reliefs, passim; Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. des Inscr., 1908, p. 537 (examples found in the sea near Mahdia), and Ausonia, 1907, pp. 270, 274 (the Chigi Vase). Examples particularly close to ours are in the Museum of the Capitol and in the Vatican (Gusman, P., L'Art décoratif de Rome, Pls. LXIV., XCI. and CXXV.Google Scholar).

3 The restoration is based on the general design evolved for the feet of such kraters (cf. especially Gusman, P., L'Art décoratif de Rome, Pl. LXIV.Google Scholar), though there are, it seems, no certainly antique feet in good preservation belonging to extant marble vases of this particular type.

4 For an analysis of this relief technique cf. Metropolitan Museum Bulletin, January, 1924, p. 12.Google Scholar It should be noted that the surface of the vase was never properly smoothed throughout, so that the grooves and ridges produced by the depressed contour lines are rather conspicuous. A similar roughness is observable in some of the figures, especially on the necks and faces; and in the flutist the artist changed the position of her pipes while working on the figure and had not removed the traces of his earlier design. Evidently the last finishing process was never applied. Perhaps the little supports which connect the handles with the body of the vase were likewise originally intended to be removed; though they have been left on other examples also where the surface appears to be smoother (cf. the vase in the Capitoline Museum, Gusman, P., L'Art décoratif de Rome, ii. Pl. LXIV.Google Scholar).

5 I have confined myself here to reliefs of this type, that is, to Hauser's Class I., to which our krater belongs; and have not included the more crowded compositions in the style of the Borghese vase (Hauser's Class II.).

6 Bulletino Communale, iii. Pls. XII. and XIII.

7 Pistolesi, , Il Vaticano, iv. Pl. XXXIX.Google Scholar

8 Arndt-Amelung-Bruckmann, , Einzelaufnahmen, Nos. 1683–1686.Google Scholar

9 Pistolesi, loc. cit.

10 Michaelis, , Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, p. 450Google Scholar, No. 58.

11 Zoega, , Bassirilievi antichi, ii. Pl. LXXXIV.Google Scholar

12 Brunn-Bruckmann, , Denkmäler der griechischen und rōmischen Skulptur, Pl. 599.Google Scholar

13 Müller-Wieseler, , Denkmäler der antiken Kunst, ii. Pl. XXVII. 295.Google Scholar

14 Museo Borbonico, vii. Pl. IX.

15 Catalogue, I. No. 1357.

16 Cf. Brunn-Bruckmann, , Denkmäler, Pl. 600, 2.Google Scholar

17 The device of mounting a tablet on a pilaster occurs also on the Ikarios relief in the British Museum (Loewy, Neuattische Kunst, Fig. 24), where we see erected a panel with a Victory driving a chariot; ‘doubtless a votive tablet to commemorate a chariot victory’ (Smith, A. H., B.M. Sculpture, No. 2190, p. 242Google Scholar); and on a fragment in the National Museum in Rome, perhaps part of a representation of a sanctuary (cf. Schmidt, , Archaistische Kunst, Pl. XIX. 3Google Scholar). It would be futile to seek for our tablet a special significance; for it certainly serves well the purpose for which it was obviously intended, that of an effective space-filler.

18 Reinach, , Répertoire des Reliefs, iii. p. 436, 1.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., iii. p. 135.

20 Cf. B.S.A., 1896, Pl. XIV. p. 171. For archaistic versions of this theme cf. Schmidt, , Archaistische Kunst, Pls. XII. ff.Google Scholar

21 Cf. Brunn-Bruckmann, , Denkmäler, Pl. 599, A–B.Google Scholar

22 Cf. Jahresh., vi. 1903, p. 90, Fig. 45.

23 Cf. the list given by Bloch in Roscher, , Nymphen, p. 557 ff.Google Scholar; Schmidt, , Archaist. Kunst, p. 30 ffGoogle Scholar; also Staïs, , Marbres et Bronzes du Musée National, Nos. 1445–1449.Google Scholar

24 Casson, , Catalogue of the Akropolis Museum, ii. No. 1338.Google Scholar

25 Cf. Loewy, Neuattische Kunst, Fig. 23; compare also the relief in the Vatican, Loewy, op. cit., Fig. 5.

26 Cf. Casson, op. cit., No. 11.

27 Ibid., No. 12.

28 The three-sided base from the Street of Tripods in the National Museum in Athens, classed by Hauser, (Neuattische Reliefs, p. 68, No. 98)Google Scholar and Collignon, (Histoire de la Sculpture, II., p. 645)Google Scholar as Neo-Attic and derived from the Parthenon frieze, has since rightly been recognised as a fourth-century original (cf. Waldmann, Griechische Originale, No. 161, Kastriotes, Catalogue of Sculpture in the National Museum, No. 1463).

29 For a recent study of these cf. Schmidt, , Archaistische Kunst (1922).Google Scholar

30 Cf. e.g. Loewy, op. cit., Figs. 15, 17.

31 Ibid., Fig. 16.

32 Ibid., Figs. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 22, 23.

33 Ibid., Fig. 7.

34 Cf. e.g. Hoppin, , Handbook, ii. pp. 41, 55, 77Google Scholar; Dar.-Sagl., Figs. 707, 4772.

35 Arndt-Amelung-Bruckmann, , Einzelaufnahmen, Pls. 1683–1686Google Scholar; and Loewy, op. cit., Figs. 9–12.

36 Benndorf, , Das Heroon von Gjölbaschi-Trysa, Pl. XX.Google Scholar

37 Brunn-Bruckmann, , Denkmäler, Pl. 599Google Scholar, text.

38 ‘So ziemlich alle Archäologen, welche die Basis im Lateran selbst gesehen haben, sind sich einig darüber, dass eine solche Marmorarbeit aus keiner jüngeren Periode stammt als aus dem vierten Jahrhundert’ (Hauser, p. 8); Loewy, , Neuattische Kunst (1922), p. 5Google Scholar: ‘Noch bewahrt der Lateran, verstümmelt und entstellt, die aus Athen verschleppte Dreifussbasis etwa der gleichen Zeit (Ende des 4 Jahrhundert)’; Heibig, , Führer (1912), ii. p. 29 f.Google Scholar: ‘Der Künstler der Basis wird ein Zeitgenosse Timotheos und Leochares gewesen sein. …’

39 No. 37 of Hauser's list of types.

40 Hauser's No. 39.

41 Ibid., No. 44.

42 Cf. Hauser, text to Brunn-Bruckmann, , Denkmäler, Pl. 699Google Scholar, p. 3, Fig. 2.

43 Mendel, , Constantinople Catalogue, II.Google Scholar, No. 576.

44 Probably not a taenia but part of the retaining band of the lyre into which the left hand is inserted (cf. American Journal of Archaeology, 1923, 3, p. 279).