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Krokotos and White Heron

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

A. D. Ure
Affiliation:
University of Reading

Extract

Professor Haspels in her Attic Black-figured Lekythoi has described the work of the Theseus painter and analysed his style. In this account of him she naturally gives more consideration to his lekythoi than to the other shapes that he decorated, but his numerous skyphoi, painted in the ‘White Heron’ workshop, are listed in full and briefly discussed. Miss Haspels describes the Theseus painter as the moving spirit in this busy undertaking, until at last, she suggests, he may have ‘got weary of inspiring the hacks in the “Heron workshop” and of witnessing their decay’ and so left and went elsewhere. Later she adds that ‘that workshop apparently turned out skyphoi before he joined’, but the theme has never been developed, and there is now a general tendency to attribute all skyphoi from this shop that are not by his hand to followers or imitators of the Theseus painter without further qualification. This may be somewhat misleading, since followers and imitators are necessarily later than what they follow and imitate. I hope to show that the shop in which the Theseus painter painted his skyphoi was a flourishing concern, making both skyphoi and kylikes, before he entered it, and that some of his companions, so far from being imitators, were his seniors and to some extent his teachers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1955

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References

For permission to publish vases I am indebted to the Trustees of the British Museum; Dr. L. Bernabo Brea, Museo Nazionale, Syracuse; the late Professor G. H. Chase, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; M. P. Devambez, the Louvre; Professor H. Diepolder, Museum antiker Kleinkunst, Munich; Mr. D. B. Harden, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Professor R. Herbig, University of Heidelberg; Miss D. K. Hill, Wakers Art Gallery, Baltimore; Mrs. S. Karouzou, National Museum, Athens; Dr. Maria Santangelo, Villa Giulia Museum, Rome; Professor A. D. Trendall, University of Sydney; the Warden and Fellows of Winchester College; Professor Rodney S. Young, University of Pennsylvania. I am also much indebted to Dr. W. Schiering for taking for me numerous photographs, including those reproduced in Plates V 3, XIV 3, 5, 21, XV 2, and Figs. 4–6. For other photographs and information and for help and facilities of various kinds I wish also to thank Mr. Llewellyn Brown, Dr. H. A. Cahn, Dr. R. Lullies, Dr. B. Neutsch, Mrs. W. F. Oakeshott, M. Jules Paublan and Dr. Hermine Speier. To Sir John Beazley I owe a special debt. He has most generously lent me notes and photographs of eye cups, and he first drew my attention to nos. 7, 10, 14, and 25 in my kylix list. My thanks are due also to the University of Reading for a contribution towards the cost of the plates.

1 ABL 141 f.

2 Op. cit. 146.

3 JHS LVIII (1938) 257.

4 The yellow, inclining to biscuit, is unmistakable on the two skyphoi from Rhitsona (6 and 7 of the above list) which came out of the grave looking bright and new, and on a number of others. In some cases it has faded almost to ivory and has sometimes been mistaken for a dirty white. It is here referred to throughout as yellow, regardless of its present condition.

5 So Collignon and Couve, Cat. 251. For this view compare the Corinthian amphora in Berlin, Pfuhl, MuZ, fig. 190, where Perseus attacks the monster with stones, of which a pile lies ready for use at his feet. Alternatively, he offers the hydra a bait, perhaps some drugged substance which he has detached from a mass held on his arm; so Brommer, op. cit., p. 5.

6 I did not observe on the vase anything corresponding to the group of white spots shown on the drawing figured by Heydemann and Brommer.

7 Athena's chiton is yellow on skyphoi 10 and 12 of the following group.

8 ABL 250 no. 27.

9 CV, Taranto fasc. ii, pl. 11.

10 I was wrong in attributing nos. 6–8 to the same hand as 1 and 2 in Sixth and Fifth 60.

11 For the setting up of the herms by Hipparchos and the consequent popularity of the cult see AM 60–1 (1935–6) 300 f.; CQ XLV (1951) 31.

12 Sixth and Fifth 60.

13 Acropolis 679, Payne, and Young, , Archaic Marble Sculpture, pl. 30.Google Scholar

14 Gnomon VI (1930) 326.

15 See, e.g., for B.F. the Thetis of the Munich amphora 1415, CV, fasc. i, pl. 46. 2, and for R.F. the Artemis in the Chicago cup by Douris, , Beazley, , ARV 291Google Scholar, no. 175, Harrison, and MacColl, , Greek Vase Paintings, pl. xix.Google Scholar

16 Apart from style grave contexts point to a considerable difference of date between the floruit of the two groups. At Rhitsona two Krokotos skyphoi were found in grave 31 and two Sub-krokotos in grave 18. The evidence of the Corinthian aryballoi, black glaze kantharoi, and vases in the local Boeotian Kylix style (all of which were found in large numbers) shows that the burial in grave 18 was distinctly later than the burial in grave 31; see the chronological table Sixth and Fifth 78.

17 CA 1812. Ht. 0·16 m., diam. 0·22 m. Two black circles on base. Beneath handles, white heron.

18 These letters occur with variations and permutations on a number of skyphoi from this shop painted by various hands, e.g. Plates V 4, VII 2, IX 2, and others not figured here. Their presence on this particular vase invites the speculation that the inscription may have originated in a scene in which Eos figured, and that in the hands of illiterate painters the letters degenerated into mere space fillers, the sigma becoming nu or just a smudge.

19 Compare the yellow flesh of the women of the Krokotos painter's skyphos 2.

20 Inv. 1925. 12–17. 1. Ht. 0·115 m., diam. 0·162 m. Two black circles on base.

21 Sixth and Fifth 61.

22 In grave 18; Sixth and Fifth 60, pl. xviii 18. 99. Found in the same grave as no. 14 of our list. My inventory gives the paint as white. I have had no opportunity of verifying it.

23 Philadelphia University Museum MS5481, Haspels 253 no. 1; AJA 1922 174–5, figs. 1, g2; Philadelphia Museum Journal 1919, 16–17, figs. 6, 7. Generally interpreted as Herakles attacking Nereus when on his way to the garden of the Hesperides, but the club seems inappropriate to Nereus. I am much indebted to Professor Rodney S. Young for having the vase cleaned and rephotographed.

24 Sixth and Fifth 61, pl. xviii 82. 35.

25 More correctly, the lower half of an epsilon surmounted by a dot.

26 See below, p. 98.

27 Haspels, ABL 253Google Scholar, nos. 1, 10, 11, 17.

28 ABL 251, no. 36.

29 JHS LIX (1939), pl. XV.

30 Ht. 0·153 m., diam. 0–217 m.

31 ABL 143.

32 Cf. the feet of his vines, e.g. CV, Brussels fase, iii, pl. 26. 4. Copenhagen fasc. iii, pl. 119. 9a.

33 Camarina 26857. Ht. 0·16 m., diam. 0·225 m.

34 For trumpeters testing trumpets see Haspels, ABL 104Google Scholar, n. 3.

35 The yellow folds of the turban of the maenad on the right of the flute-player are very faded and do not show in the photograph.

36 E.g. Pfuhl, MuZ, fig. 362, from the workshop of Pamphaios. See also p. 99 n. 48.

37 The drawing of the satyr is not at all Thesean, but nearer to that of the painter of the Louvre Argus.

38 Graef, pl. 72. I am indebted to Sir John Beazley for pointing out this fragment to me.

39 ABL 252.

40 CV, fasc. iii, pl. 119. 9a.

41 CV, fasc. iii, pl. 26. 4. Cf. the skyphos by the same painter in Naples, , CV, fasc. i, pl. 46. 5.Google Scholar

42 Unfortunately there is much overpainting in white on these kylikes, and it is possible that in several cases modern white may conceal parts that were originally yellow.

43 The photographs on Plate xi of the Vatican cups 466, 454, and 458 are from the photographic archives of the Vatican Museums. I am much indebted to the Director of the Vatican Museums for permission to publish them.

44 Cf. the border round the gorgoneion from the workshop of Nikosthenes, Louvre F122, CV, fasc. x, pl. 98. 7.

45 The eye cup Munich 2053, AM XXV (1900) 58, fig. 18, has a mask very like these, but the gorgoneion and the treatment of the vines put it in a different category.

46 The Walters kylix has now been cleaned, and Miss Hill has kindly sent me a new photograph. This shows that a small part of the lower end of the handle on the right in Fig. 7 and the bunch of grapes hanging from it are restorations, and the stalk of the bunch hanging from the base of the handle on the left is touched up. The slender stalk in thinned glaze at the top on the right is untouched and shows the normal practice.

47 The incised line is found earlier in the vine stems of Exekias and later in those of the Theseus painter.

48 There seems to have been some uncertainty about the treatment of the bottom of the chiton. On the Munich maenad there appears behind the legs a black hem which must be taken to represent the far side of the chiton dropping below the hem of the near side, as on a Siana cup by the C painter in California CV, pl. xiv 1 b, or the vase by Oltos from the workshop of Pamphaios mentioned above, p. 96, n. 36. This is quite different from the yellow hems of the Theseus painter's Camarina and Winchester skyphoi, which cover both legs. The maenad on the Winchester kylis combines the two, having a red hem that covers the advanced left leg but passes behind the other, which is senseless.

49 Formen 15 f.

50 Professor Mingazzini regards this as a discoloured white.

51 Found also in the workshop of Pamphaios, e.g. Vatican 453 Albizzati, pl. 68, where both eyes have the rounded end towards the right.

52 The teeth of the gorgoneion have been repainted on both 19 and 21.

53 The foot now attached to the cup appears to be alien.

54 The kylix Munich 2081, destroyed in the war, also has an ivy wreath on a yellow ground round the rim and a mounted Dionysos, but it does not come from this workshop. I am much indebted to Professor Bloesch for information about this vase.

55 CV, Bibl. Nat. fasc. ii, p. 51.

56 Sixth and Fifth, pl. XVIII 31. 172.

57 Most of these features are found on gorgoneia from the shop of Pamphaios, e.g. Madrid 10910, CV, fasc. ii, pl. 2. 1.

58 Witte, J. de, Cabinet d'Antiquités de M. E. Durand, p. 45, no. 126.Google Scholar

59 Museum of Fine Arts inv. 99. 524; Caskey, , Geometry, no. 106, p. 151.Google Scholar Ht. 0·168 m., diam. 0·225 m.

60 The subject is akin to that of the Philadelphia fragments by Exekias, Beazley, , DABF, pl. 31Google Scholar, where a warrior and a Scythian archer are grazing their horses.

61 The late Durand skyphos no. 8 is an exception.

62 Now in Syracuse Museum. See also MA XVII (1906) 219, fig. 175.

63 Furtwängler and Reichhold, pl. 6, Pfuhl. MuZ, fig. 501.

64 Technau, , Exekias, pl. 6.Google Scholar

65 DABF 71.

66 Hesperia VI (1937) 475, fig. 4.

67 CV, fasc. iii, pl. 20. 3.

68 Technau, , Exekias, pl. 13.Google Scholar

69 CV, fasc. ii, pl. IV 1.

70 Pfuhl, , MuZ 265.Google Scholar

71 CV, fasc. iii, pll. 115. 1, 116.

72 Sotheby Sale Catalogue, July 2, 1929, pl. 3.

73 Hesperia VI (1937), fig. 1, 479, fig. 6, 481, fig. 7, 485, fig. 9.

74 Technau, , Exekias, pl. 5.Google Scholar

75 JHS LII (1932) 200.

76 JHS XLII (1922) 192, n. 2, no. v. Now in the Ashmolean Museum, inv. 1939. 114.

77 Technau, , Exekias, pl. 13 b.Google Scholar

78 CV, fasc. x, pl. 101. 1–5; Hoppin, , Handbook BFV 306–7.Google Scholar

79 Formen 62.

80 It is interesting to note that the majority of the kylikes were exported to Italy, while most of the skyphoi remained in Greece, being specially favoured by the Boeotians.

81 Tillyard, , Hope Vases, pl. 7Google Scholar, no. 75. I am grateful to Miss Christine Alexander for sending me information about this vase and confirming the presence of yellow, mistaken by Tillyard for white.

82 This seems more likely than that the idea originated with the Athena painter, Haspels, ABL 152.Google Scholar His Poseidon lekydios, op. cit. pl. 44. 4, though close to the New York skyphos, is clearly later.