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THE HARROW PAINTER, with a Note on the Geras Painter
Michael Padgett, Princeton Univeristy
18. Pelike Harvard 1925.30.34
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One of the most intriguing of the Geras Painter's pelikai from this period
is
On one side, Herakles is striding to the right with a sturdy carrying-pole balanced on his left shoulder. Lashed by the handles to either end of the pole are a pair of pointed amphorae. Herakles is dressed in a short chiton with folds drawn with dilute glaze. Over this, the skin of the Nemean Lion is pulled snugly around his body and secured with a belt; the forepaws are knotted at the throat and the head worn like a hood. The skin is edged with a stripe of thinned glaze, and the furry texture is indicated with numerous small crescents in dilute glaze. The hero rests his knotty club on his right shoulder.
On the reverse, a balding satyr with a beard, long ears, and a tail is standing in profile to the right. He wears a cloak wrapped around his waist and legs like a long skirt, a motif employed elsewhere by the painter.[72] He leans over and with both hands grasps the rope of a shadoof, a water-drawing device of Egyptian origin consisting of a long pole, weighted at one end and balanced on a post. The rope, drawn with added red, is secured to a vessel, the mouth of which is just appearing at the top of the well, which apparently has no well-head. The vessel is being raised, not lowered, as there is slack in the rope above the satyr's hands. From the shape of the mouth, the vessel can be identified as a kados, a type of plain-ware jar which, to judge by other representations on vases, was in common use as a well bucket.[73]
The meaning of these scenes is obscure, but the two sides are probably connected; one thinks of another pelike by the Geras Painter, on which a satyr is preparing a dish of some kind on one side, and another satyr, on the reverse, is running up with a bucket of water.[74] Herakles and the satyrs did not normally get along well, as the satyrs were always trying to steal his weapons. Satyrs are sometimes shown harassing women when they come to fetch water, and in two cases a shadoof is represented.[75] In this case, Herakles must be bringing the amphorae to be filled at the well. The same subject, without the satyr, was depicted by the Pan Painter on a column-krater in Berlin.[76] In the Pan Painter's version, Herakles carries an amphora in each hand and runs toward a fountain on the reverse, which has a spout in the shape of a donkey's head. Some scholars have suggested an allusion to Herakles' water-drawing contest with Lepreos.[77] This seems an obscure and unlikely explanation and, as Boardman points out, Lepreos is not present on either vase.[78]
Furtwängler suggested that the Herakles on the Pan Painter's krater
was preparing for his bath, and this is probably also what the Geras Painter's
Herakles has in mind.[79] The presence of the satyr
indicates a possibly comic situation, such as a satyr play. The comic
possibilities are many: Herakles might force the satyrs to draw water for his
bath, and they, when he is thus occupied, might attempt to make off with his
clothes and weapons. The carrying-pole used by the hero may have been
suggested by the painter's depiction, on a
volute krater in Munich, of H
erakles carrying the Kerkopes, a story in which the pole is an essential and
traditional element (
[68]
[69] H. 21.2 cm.; Diam. 15.6 cm.; Diam. mouth 11.0 cm.; Diam.
foot 12.2 cm.
[70] On the figures, the most damage is to the right amphora,
the lower body and right leg of Herakles, and the lower body and legs of the
satyr.
[71] See
[72] Cf. a satyr on
[73] On a skyphos by the Zephyros Painter in Zurich, a man
raises a kados using a shadoof;
[74]
[75] One is a red-figure bell-krater,
[76] Berlin
F 4027;
[77] First suggested by
[78]
[79] See