Vase Catalog Number: Boston 01.8083

Essay: C & B No. 38

Height, without lid, 0.327 m.; width, including handles, 0.374 m.; diameter of body, 0.281 m. Intact, including the lid. The interior painted black. The edges of the foot and of the lid reserved. Very sparing use of relief contours, as follows: A, left-hand figure, right arm, top of right foot; central figure, back of neck, lower line of right arm, fingers, kantharos, thyrsus; right-hand figure, part of upper line of right arm, stem of twig. B, central figure, top of left foot. Relief lines used also for outlining portions of the handle ornaments. Brown used on A for details of the fillets, and for the zigzag ends of the left-hand figure's mantle. White paint used on B for the wreath held by the left-hand figure and for the fillets of the other two.

Formerly, with its companion-piece, no. 39 (Boston 01.8082), in the Pasquale collection at Curti, near S. Maria di Capua, and found in that neighbourhood. Petersen, Röm. Mitt. viii, 1893, pp. 336, 339, no. 23. Beazley, V.A., p. 154. Hoppin, i, p. 193, no. 2. Beazley, Att. V., p. 354, no. 7. The shape given in Caskey, G.G.V., p. 96, no. 53.

A. Group of three women. The woman in the centre stands in profile to right, holding out an apple in her extended right hand. Her left hand holds a kantharos, and a large thyrsus is leant against her shoulder. She wears an Ionic chiton with kolpos, and has an ivy wreath on her head. The woman facing her looks at a flower which she lifts in her right hand, while her left holds a sprig of ivy. The woman at the left was evidently intended to hold a wreath rendered in white like that in the hands of the corresponding figure on the reverse, but the wreath has been accidentally omitted. Both of the lateral figures wear chiton and himation and disk earrings, and have their heads bound with a 'thick chaplet of straw or wool, such as was often worn at festivals and parties'.(Note i.37.3)

B. Three women. The central figure stands in profile holding a thyrsus. Facing her, a woman holding out a white wreath. Behind her, a woman standing in front view, with head turned towards her companions. Her right hand rests on her hip, her left holds a tendril with a flower at its tip. All three are garbed in chiton and himation, and wear earrings. The one at the left has a broad headband (reserved), and the others long, white fillets wound thrice round the head.

The vase is to be grouped with a number of other stamnoi representing various aspects of an Athenian Dionysiac ceremony, identified by Nilsson as the Choes at the Anthesteria.(Note i.37.4) Six of them are by the Villa Giulia painter, and others by painters of his school.(Note i.37.5)

If our stamnos stood alone, its subject might be briefly dismissed as 'maenads'. But the women are companions of those on the Chicago stamnos; the apple and the kantharos in the hands of the central figure look as if they might just have been picked up from the table on which they are set in the picture on the obverse of that stamnos.(Note i.38.1) Evidently the painter had the same festival in mind.

About 450 B.C. By the Chicago painter, who 'carries on the style of the Villa Giulia painter in a tenderer and more fluent form'.(Note i.38.2)(Note *)

i.37.3) Beazley, Corpus, Oxford, i, Pl. 28, 1-2, p. 23. See, for example, the cup, no. 45, Pl. XX (Boston 01.8078).

i.37.4) Jahrbuch, xxxi, 1916, pp. 329-32. Cf. Beazley, Corpus, Oxford, i, p. 23, with the references there cited (especially Frickenhaus, Lenäenvasen), and Vases in Poland, pp. 30 and 51-3.

i.37.5) Villa Giulia painter, Beazley, Att. V., p. 350, nos. 17-22. Chicago painter, ibid., p. 353, no. 1; the two stamnoi here published; perhaps also the fragment in Leipzig, Att. V., p. 353, no. 8 bis. Related to the Chicago painter, Louvre G 409, Att. V., p. 477, Pottier, Corpus, Louvre, III. 1 d, Pls. 15, 3 and 8; 16, 3. Eupolis painter, London E 452, and Louvre G 407, Att. V., p. 362, nos. 6 and 7 (cf. p. 477). A fragment of another similar stamnos by the Villa Giulia painter is in Florence: what remains is part of the image of Dionysos (Beazley).

i.38.1) Figured by Frickenhaus, Lenäenvasen, Pl. IV.

i.38.2) Beazley, Vases in Poland, p. 48. He publishes a fine stamnos in Cracow by the painter (Pls. 21, 2, and 22), and adds four more works to those listed in Att. V.

Another stamnos by the painter, recently acquired by Oxford, has three maenads on each side: the reverse is very like that of the Boston vase.

*) (From Addenda to Part I) No. 38. ARV. p. 407, Chicago Painter no. 4.

Keywords:

apple, chiton, companion, earring, flower, holding, ivy, kantharos, thyrsos, wearing, woman, wreath

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