Ancient Sculpture and Works of Art
Ancient Sculpture and Works of Art
Property from the Collections of the late Jean and the late Alexandre Zafiropulo
An Attic Red-figured Stamnos, attributed to the Berlin Painter, circa 490 B.C.
Auction Closed
December 5, 03:41 PM GMT
Estimate
100,000 - 150,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
decorated on one side with a youth proffering a cockerel to a younger boy before him, gathering up the folds of his himation under his left arm, leaning on a stick, and holding a lyre with tortoise-shell patterned sounding-box in his right hand, the boy holding a javelin in his extended right hand, his himation enveloping his left arm, a maltese dog between them, an aryballos and strigil in frontal, foreshortened view beside the boy, a dog below the handle, a bearded trainer standing a left, wearing a himation, and carrying a stick, all three figures wearing wreaths; and painted on the other side at left with a wreathed youth gesturing towards a younger wreathed boy, gathering up his himation in the crook of his left arm, and leaning on a stick, his right arm akimbo, a maltese dog between them, a sponge, aryballos and strigil hanging above, the younger boy wearing a himation over his shoulder, looking back, and shrugging his shoulder in response to the youth behind him, a bearded man observing them at right, wearing a himation, leaning on a stick, gesturing with his left hand, and putting his right hand to his mouth, a sponge, aryballos, and strigil hanging above the handle, a dog below the handle; the details in diluted wash and added white, tongues on the shoulder and two reserved lines below the figures.
Height as restored 35 cm.
Münzen und Medaillen, Kunstwerke der Antike, Auktion 18, Basel, November 29th, 1958, pp. 38-39, no. 113, pl. 35, and pl. 37
acquired by the late Jean Zafiropulo at the above sale
by descent to the present owner
“Classical antiquities from private collections in Great Britain: a loan exhibition in aid of the Ashmole archive,” Sotheby’s, London, January 15th-31st, 1986
COMPOSITION AND SUBJECT
Although no athletes actively engaged in exercise are shown (and indeed there is no nudity), the setting or location of these images is shown by three groups of athletic equipment standardly used for cleansing after training suspended from red cords on the shoulder (sponge, globular aryballos and strigil), the javelin held by the boy on side A, and the straight slender stick held by the bearded man on the left of side A which identifies him as a trainer. The groups of athletic cleaning equipment and the dogs below the handles serve as connecting elements to show that the two sides should be read together: social interaction at the gymnasium or palaistra following a workout.
The cockerel offered by the youth to the younger boy on the obverse is symbolic, a courtship gift intended to develop romantic interaction. Cockerels are often shown both genre and mythological representations, most famously on a contemporary bell-krater in the Louvre by the Berlin Painter with Zeus and Ganymede (BAPD 201933). The gestures between the youth and boy on side B likewise indicate that the older is trying to attract the attention of the younger.
The four dogs on this vase are of two types. Those below the handles are larger, hunting dogs, possibly associated with guarding the establishment. The smaller ones on either side are much loved pets. A lost vase from Vulci shows a boy with a dog of this kind named Melitaie, in other words from Malta, Maltese. They recur on vases attributed to the Berlin Painter (e.g. BAPD 202004, BAPD 202005), and on grave reliefs. Since they had no practical use like guard or hunting dogs, their presence conveys a sense of comfortable well-being, here re-inforced by the love-gift of the cockerel and the lyre: this is the world of the affluent. On these dogs recently, see Mary B. Moore, “The Hegesiboulos Cup,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 43 (2008) 11-37; Jasper Gaunt, “A hymn to Zeus on a cup by the Brygos Painter,” in Between orality and literacy: communication and adaptation in antiquity, ed. Ruth Scodel (Leiden: Brill, 2014), [101-124] 116-117.
For Maltese dogs on grave stelai: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103SYW
A contemporary cup in Boston attributed to the Brygos Painter shows an athlete cleaning himself while his dog is attracted by the scrapings (see Lacey D. Caskey and John Davidson Beazley, Attic vase paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston I [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931] p. 24-25 no. 28, pl. 10; BAPD 203991). Two of the dogs on this stamnos stand directly below similar athletic cleaning equipment, doubtless for the same reason.
STYLE
“The Master of the Berlin Amphora” (Journal of Hellenic Studies 31 [1911] 276-295) published Sir John Beazley’s first recognition of one of the greatest vase-painters ever to work in the Athenian Kerameikos. His last public lecture, delivered on the Berlin Painter in Melbourne in 1964, comes to an end thus: ”Perhaps I ought to conclude with a characterization of the artist. I hesitate to do this. It is fifty-five years since I first became aware of the Berlin Painter, and he has been a friendly presence ever since. I would rather not sum him up in a few sentences… If I may be allowed to express a wish, it is that there may remain in your memories, not anything that I have said, but something of what you have seen” (Sir John Beazley, The Berlin Painter, Melbourne University Press on behalf of the Australian Humanities Research Council, 1964, p. 14-15). In the decades since Beazley’s publications appeared, the Berlin Painter (as he is now called) has become one of the most admired artists of archaic Greece, culminating in a retrospective exhibition of his work held at the Princeton University Art Museum in 2017.
“The earlier vases are the best, and among them are many of the masterpieces of vase-painting” (Sir John Beazley, Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, 2nd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963) p. 196. Cardon further refined Beazley’s term ‘early’ and placed this stamnos in her ‘Early Group IV’, a phase of great creativity whose masterpiece is the amphora of type A in Basel with Herakles and Athena (BAPD 275090). She also compared the youth proffering the cockerel on side A of this stamnos with the youth rolling a hoop and holding out a cockerel on an oinochoe by the Pan Painter in New York (BAPD 206371). Possible teacher – pupil connections between the Berlin and Pan Painters have been discussed by Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood (“Who was the teacher of the Pan Painter?”, Journal of Hellenic Studies 95 [1975] 107-121) and Amy Smith (“The evolution of the Pan Painter’s style,” Hesperia 75 [2006] 435-451).
SHAPE
Stamnoi were jars intended to contain wine or oil. Originally, they were lidded: for one by the Berlin Painter in London that preserves its lid, see BAPD 201968. Philippaki (op. cit. p. 35) detected connections between the stamnoi of the Class of the Early Berlin Painter with a stamnos in Chicago by the Copenhagen Painter (BAPD 202937) and one in Munich by Harrow Painter (BAPD 202871).
Published
Karl Schefold, Meisterwerke griechische Kunst, Basel, 1960, p. 198 no. 213 (brief catalogue entry), p. 201, ill.
John Davidson Beazley, Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1963, p. 207, no. 143 (as Berlin Painter, early), 1633 (recording Philippaki)
Barbara Philippaki, The Attic Stamnos, Oxford, 1967, p. 32 no. 8 (assigning it to the Class of the Early Stamnoi by the Berlin Painter), p. 33, pl. 22,1
Carol Moon Cardon, The Berlin Painter and his School, doct. diss., New York University-Institute of Fine Arts, 1977, p. 108, no. 187, and pp. 131-132, pl. 75.
Donna Carol Kurtz, The Berlin Painter, Oxford, 1983, p. 105 (passing mention)
Gundel Koch-Harnack, Knabenliebe und Tiergeschenke. Ihre Bedeutung im päderastischen Erziehungssystem Athens, Berlin, 1983, p. 256, no. 118
Andrew Lear and Eva Cantarella, Images of ancient Greek pederasty. Boys were their gods, Abingdon, 2008, p. 212 no. 4.60
John Michael Padgett et al., The Berlin Painter and his World: Athenian vase-painting in the early fifth century B.C., New Haven, 2017, p. 382, B 143 [B = Beazley number]
Beazley Archive Pottery Database (BAPD), no. 201962 (https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/record/F633E3A0-2AD9-422B-8F50-8614F760AE2F [pre-restoration photos])
Arachne, no. 1203330 (https://arachne.dainst.org/entity/1203330?fl=20&q=1203330&resultIndex=1), DAI neg. nos. 57.704-710, as Naples market
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