Vase Catalog Number: Mississippi 1977.3.99

Essay: Shapiro No. 36

Attic Red-Figure PelikeCollection of The University Museums, University of Mississippi Phase I Cultural Center (1977.3.99)
Attributed to the Calliope Painter430-420 B.C.Height: 19.1 cm.Diameter: 16.1 cm.Side A: Hector (?) arming.Side B: Priam (?).

A young man stands pulling off his cloak with his right hand while with the left he takes the spear and helmet the woman holds for him. She carries his shield, which bears a lion as its device, and gazes at him over its rim. On the reverse, an older man stands holding a scepter and looking intently before him. He must belong with the two figures on side A, in the traditional grouping of a departing warrior between his parents. This was one of the longest-lived themes in Greek vase-painting, as well as in Greek life. War was endemic in the Greek world, with cities constantly quarreling among themselves, and every male citizen could expect to be in battle many times in the course of his life. This pelike was painted in the early years of the Peloponnesian War, when scenes like this one were being enacted frequently in Athenian homes. No names are given here; the young man looks like a contemporary Athenian whose wife or mother is helping him with his weapons and shield, all of which are conventional 5th-century heavy infantry equipment. If this were meant to be a contemporary scene, however, we would expect to see more armor; a breast-plate certainly, if not also a pair of greaves. A young man who goes out to battle wearing only a helmet and a sword belt is more likely to be a legendary hero, at least in vase-painting. The bearded man on side B gives another clue to the warrior's identity: from his wreath and scepter, he must be a king, and the hero leaving home is his son. In all probability he is Priam, and the young man Hector, while the woman may be his mother or his wife Andromache.

The painter has set his figures well apart, and has made the helmet the focal point of the picture by setting it at the crossing point of the vertical line of the spear and the diagonal lines of the two arms. These diagonals are extended and made more emphatic by the line of the cloak which Hector pulls off with his right hand and by the body of the lion on the shield. The helmet is held almost at eye level; are the figures looking at it or at each other? Perhaps we have here an echo of the touching scene in the Iliad (Hom. Il. 6.369-502) of Hector's farewell to his wife Andromache, who begs him not to go back to the battle, and to their baby son, who takes fright and begins to cry at the sight of his father's helmet, with its crest "nodding terribly, as he thought." The mood here is quiet and restrained, as in much of the art of the period, but there is something of poignancy in the two faces regarding each other over the crest of the helmet.

Keywords:

Andromache, carrying, cloak, departing, departure, Hektor, Hektor departs, helmet, holding, lion, man, Priam, scepter, shield, spear, warrior, woman

Views: