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Polygnotos and His Group
Susan Matheson, Yale University

13. Scenes of Daily Life: Women Part 2

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Similar scenes, again often with Eros, appear on loutrophoroi and lebetes gamikoi, offering more direct associations with weddings through the functions of the vases themselves; both of these shapes are rare among the Polygnotans but common enough in the work of contemporaries like the Washing Painter.[70] Babies or children are rare in such scenes, although an unattributed hydria in the Polygnotan style at Harvard University (Harvard 1960.342; Illustration 37; Illustration 38) shows two women with a baby in a scene marked as a domestic interior by the loom behind the figures.

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Illustration 39

Occasionally the women are named, some as Muses, or Nereids, or poets, as the reading figure on a hydria by an unnamed Polygnotan in Athens, who is named Sappho (Athens 1260).[71] When the figures are named as muses, the scene may be envisioned as outdoors, although on the most impressive of these, where Terpsichore plays for Mousaios on the Peleus Painter's amphora in London (London E 271; Illustration 39; Illustration 40; Illustration 41; Illustration 42), [72] there is no indication of landscape.
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Illustration 42
The Peleus Painter has shown remarkable attention to detail in the rendering of the musical instruments on this vase, as well as to the klismos on which Terpsichore sits while she plays her harp.

70. On the Washing Painter, see ARV2, 1126-33. A dissertation on the Washing Painter by Victoria Sebatai, University of Cincinnati, is near completion (1993).

71. ARV2, 1060, no. 145; Para., 445; Beazley Addenda 2, 323. The woman reading is named *S*A*P*P*W*S, her companions *N*I*K*O*P*O*L*I*S and *K*A*L*L*I*S. On the book roll she is reading, see J.D. Beazley, ""Hymn to Hermes," AJA 52 (1948) 336-40; H. Immerwahr, "Book Rolls on Attic Vases," Classical, Mediaeval, and Renaissance Studies in Honor of Berthold Louis Ullmann, vol. 1 (Rome 1964) 26; H. Immerwahr, "More Book Rolls on Attic Vases," AntK 16 (1973) 143-47.

72. ARV2, 1039, no. 13; CVA, London, British Museum 3 (Great Britain 4) pl. 11,1 and 12,2; Para., 443; Beazley Addenda 2, 319. The figures are named: *T*E*R*Y*I*C*O*R*A; *M*O*S*A*I*O*S; *M*E*L*E*L*O*S*A.

Part 3 of this Section