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The Portland Vase Again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

D. E. L. Haynes
D. E. L. Haynes
Affiliation:
The British Museum
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Extract

The editor having invited me to reply to Professor Bernard Ashmole's ‘New Interpretation of the Portland Vase’, the reader will, I hope, forgive me for returning to a topic which he may think in danger of being worn threadbare. Although my own interpretation has been generously characterised by Professor Ashmole as ‘persuasively argued’, its failure to convince not only him but Professor Hans Möbius and Professor F. L. Bastet shows that it was not persuasive enough; and the aim of the following pages is to re-state the case for it and to fortify it, as I hope, with additional arguments which would have overloaded the popular publication in which it first appeared.

I begin, as before, with the young man who advances to the right in front of a small structure consisting of two square pillars raised on a continuous base and supporting a Doricising entablature (Plate IV). According to Möbius and Ashmole this structure is a gateway and the young man has just passed through it. ‘Ask yourself’, Ashmole bids the reader, ‘where he can have come from if not through the gateway, and you will see that this must be the correct solution.’ But must it? If the young man had come through the supposed gateway, surely the foot he first set to the ground—his left—would be more or less on the axis of the opening and not, as it actually is, with the heel almost touching the corner of the base nearest the spectator: an artist in whose work ‘no detail is negligible’ would hardly have put a foot as wrong as that.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 88 , November 1968 , pp. 58 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1968

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References

1 JHS lxxxvii (1967) 1–17.

2 The Portland Vase (1964) 13–21.

3 Gnomon xxxvi (1964) 636 f.; Die Reliefs der Portlandvase und das antike Dreifigurenbild (Abh. d. bayr. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, n.F., Heft 61, 1965).

4 BABesch xli (1966) 148–150.

5 The further pillar and the greater part of the base are carved in the blue glass.

6 Plates IV and V are from photographs taken with the periphery camera manufactured by Research Engineers Ltd. to whose Directors I am grateful for permission to use them here. Figs. 1, 8, 10 and 16 are reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum, Fig. 7 by courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Fig. 6 was drawn by my wife.

7 I Corinthinians 15, 53; Augustine Civ. 13, 24, p. 599, 10.

8 Other examples: RM xxvi (1911) 34, fig. 13; 40, fig. 18; 150, fig. 64; pl. 2a; lxxii (1965) pl. 57, 1. Reinach, , Rép. rel. iii 132Google Scholar, 1; Rép. peint. 113, 1; 164, 3; 236. 1; 237, 3; 261, 2 and 5; 274, 4; 388, 6. Möbius, Reliefs der Portlandvase pl. v (bottom).

9 Cf. Gnomon xxxviii (1966) 730 f.

10 Athenaeum (Pavia), n.s., xxxvi (1958) 123–141.

11 E.g. Robert, , Ant. Sarkophag. iii 1, pl. xii, 39, 40Google Scholar; xiii, 47; xiv, 49; xviii, 72; xx, 77; xxi, 78; xxii, 79; xxiv, 83.

12 E.g. Himeros on the Meidias Painter's hydria in Florence, Hirmer-Axias, , Greek Vase Painting (1962) pl. 217Google Scholar; Lucifer escorting Sol's chariot, on a sarcophagus, Robert, op. cit. iii 1, pl. xxiv, 83a; Eros escorting Europa, on a mosaic from Aquileia, , Reinach, , Rép. Peint. 12, 2.Google Scholar

13 Adonis: Robert, op. cit. iii 1, pl. ii, 3 (Diana); ii, 4 (nurse); v, 20 (huntsman). Roux-Barré, , Herculaneum et Pompéi ii pl. 55Google Scholar; Herrmann, , Denkmäler der Malerei pl. 52Google Scholar; Reinach, , Rép. Peint. 64, 4Google Scholar; 65, 3 (Erotes). Theseus: Herrmann, op. cit. pl. 16; Reinach, , Rép. Peint. iii, 1.Google Scholar Pelias: Herrmann, op. cit. pl. 75. Phaedra: Robert, op. cit. iii 2, pl. xlvii, 152b; xlix, 156, 159. Cf. Euripides, , Hippolytus 200Google Scholar:

14 Herrmann, op. cit. pl. 11.

15 Levi, D., Antioch Mosaic Pavements, pls. xxxixGoogle Scholarb, clviib.

16 See n. 42 below.

17 Mem. Amer. Acad. Rome iv (1924) pl. xlv.

18 E.g. Trendall, , Vasi italioti ed etruschi a figure rosse (Vasi antichi dipinti del Vaticano) fase, ii, pl. xxix, V 17Google Scholar; xxx, V 23, V 31; xxxii, V 36, V 38, V 41; xxxiv, V 51, Xi, X3, Z 24.

19 Philostr., Imag. i 2. 1.

20 Cf. Gnomon xxxviii (1966) 731.

21 In fact they occupy separate rocks. In order to space the three figures evenly, the artist has been obliged to make the girl's rock overlap the man's, but he has been careful to mark the division between them.

22 Philostr., Heroic. 20. 35.

23 Reg. No. 1919.6–20.3. The fragment evidently once belonged to the so-called Tensa Capitolina, B.S.R., Cons. Cat. 179, no. 13, pls. 68–73. Other spectators: Reinach, , Rép. Peint. 30Google Scholar, 3 and 4; Séchan, , Études sur la tragédie grecque 254Google Scholar, fig. 75; Metzger, , Représentations dans la céramique attique du IV siècle pl. v, 3Google Scholar; xxxix, 1; Ghali-Kahil, , Enlèvements et retour d'Hélène pl. vi, 1Google Scholar; Robert, op. cit. iii 1, pl. xi, 37; Hirmer-Arias, , Greek Vase Painting, pl. 236Google Scholar (Boread in lowest register); Mem. Amer. Acad. Rome xxix (1967) pl. 43a.

24 Most of the right arm, the torch and the left leg are restored, but the general pose of the figure is not in doubt.

25 The rhomboidal object with a central hole on the Naples cameo is surely a capital like those on the vases, not, as Möbius claims, a natural stone. Since the cameo, which belonged to Lorenzo de' Medici, was known long before either of the vases, this creates a strong presumption in favour of its antiquity, which Ludwig Curtius has doubted.

26 Column-drums: Antichità di Ercolano iv pl. xlv; vii pl. i; Reinach, , Rép. Peint. 28, 5Google Scholar; 117, 5 and 7; 390, 3. Other architectural elements: Antichità di Ercolano iv pl. xxvii; Schefold, , Vergessenes Pompeii pl. 175, 4.Google Scholar The ruinous wall of the shrine in the Munich relief, Schreiber, Die hellenistischen Relief bilder, pl. lxxx, presumably has the same significance.

27 Dionysus and Ariadne: Reinach, , Rép. Peint. 113, i and 2Google Scholar; Lehmann-Hartleben and Olsen, Dionysiac Sarcophagi in Baltimore figs 9, 10, 42; de Azevedo, Cagiano, Antichità di Villa Medici pl. xxiii, 33Google Scholar; Adriani, , Repertorio d'arte dell' Egitto greco-romano, Ser. A, pl. 24.Google Scholar Mars and Rhea Silvia: Reinach, Rép. Peint. 58, 7; AA 1954, p. 442, Abb. 118; Robert, op. cit. iii 2, lx, 188; lxi, 190–192. See also Castagnoli in Enciclopedia dell' arte antica s.v. ‘Rhea Silvia’. Selene and Endymion: Herrmann, op. cit. pl. 135; Robert, op. cit. iii i, pll. xii–xxv passim.

28 Dial. deor. xi, 2.

29 Fasti iii 21.

30 Ghali-Kahil, op. cit. pl. ix, 1 and 2.

31 Ghali-Kahil, op. cit. pl. viii 2 and 3.

32 Mitteilungen v (1952) 141–148 and pl. 7, 1.

33 The leaf actually touching Aphrodite's knee is carved in the blue glass.

34 Imag. i 14. 2.

35 Cf. Haynes, Portland Vase 17–19.

36 Cf. Lesky in Pauly–Wissowa, xxxvii Halbband, s.v. ‘Peleus’ cols. 299–302.

37 l. 21: Tum Thetis humanos non despexit hymenaeos l. 31 f.: Tene suam Tethys concessit ducere neptem, Oceanusque, mari totum qui amplectitur orbem?

38 Metam. xi 229–37, 257–59.

39 op. cit. 1–20.

40 Syria vi (1925) 295 f.; vii (1926) pl. lxvii, 2.

41 Dial. Mar. v, 1.

42 On the ‘Poseidon’ pose with raised foot see Overbeck, , Kunstmythologie iii 247 f.Google Scholar and Lange, , Das Motif des aufgestützten Fusses (Leipzig Dissertation, 1879).Google Scholar Though typical of Poseidon, it was used for many other gods and for mortals; and the closest typological parallels for the sea-god on the vase are provided by an Athena on a r.f. bell-krater in Bologna (Museo Civico 325: Schauenburg, , Perseus [1960] pl. 37, 2Google Scholar) and the river-god Krimisos on a tetradrachm of Segesta (Franke, –Hirmer, , Die griechische Münze [1964] pl. 71Google Scholar, bottom left). Although the artist's main reason for using the pose here was undoubtedly its association with Poseidon, his choice of it may have been influenced to some extent by the fact that the motif of the raised foot was also appropriate to a conversation-scene (Lange, op. cit. 29).

43 Babelon, –Blanchet, , Bronzes antiques de la Bibliothèque Nationale 30, no. 64.Google Scholar Type IV in E. Wüst's article on Poseidon in Pauly–Wissowa, xliii Halbband, 540 f.

44 Oceanus identified with Nereus, and Thetis held to be the daughter of ‘maior Thetis’ (Tethys, ), Myth. Lat. i 204Google Scholar; Nereus identified with Poseidon, , Orph. hymn. xxiii 7Google Scholar; Doris identified with Amphitrite, , Hymn to Poseidon PLG4 iii 80Google Scholar; Amphitrite the daughter of Oceanus, Apollod, i 2, 2 and 4, 6.

45 On Hermes and his association with Aphrodite and Eros see Farnell, , Cults v 12Google Scholar and Eitrem in Pauly–Wissowa, xv Halbband, col. 774. Locrian reliefs: Roscher, , Lexikon der Mythologie, s.v. ‘Eros’ 1351–1352Google Scholar; Langlotz, –Hirmer, , Kunst der Westgriechen (1963) pl. ix.Google Scholar Mirror-reliefs: Züchner, , Klappspiegel no. 20, p. 18Google Scholar, Abb. 5 and no. 21, p. 18, Abb. 6 and pl. 13.

46 Ashmole, op. cit. 4, compares the lips of the masks with those of the heads under the handle-attachments of the marble basin from San Spirito in the Terme Museum, Fuchs, , Vorbilder d. neuattischen Reliefs, pl. 32 a, bGoogle Scholar; but as the heads on the basin are identified as silens by Romanelli, (NSc, 1935, 69)Google Scholar and as satyrs by Curtius, (RM xlix [1934] 276)Google Scholar, they are better left out of the discussion.

47 Ashmole, op. cit., pl. Va.

48 Cf. Herbig, , Pan (1949) 61Google Scholar; Bloesch, , Antike Kunst in der Schweiz (1943) 133 f. no. 46, pll. 78–79.Google Scholar