100. 01.8032 SKYPHOS from Vico Equense (NE. of Sorrento) PLATE LII
Height 0.228, breadth 0.398 with the handles, 0.279 without. Formerly in the Bourguignon collection at Naples. Annali 1884 pl. M (Fröhner), whence Robert Archäologische Märchen pp. 194-5; AJA. 1915 pp. 413-14 (Swindler); A, AJA. 1918 p. 110 (Caskey); A, VA. p. 130; Diepolder Penth. pll. 22-3; A, Fairbanks and Chase p. 35 fig. 30; the shape, Hambidge p. 100 fig. 12 = Caskey G. p. 155 no. 112. A, a goddess (Aphrodite?) rising and two Pans. B, satyrs and maenad. About 460 B.C., by the Penthesilea Painter (Swindler in AJA. 1915 pp. 412-14; VA. p. 130; Att. V. p. 276 no. 52; ARV. p. 588 no. 103). This is one of a dozen skyphoi or cup-skyphoi by the Penthesilea Painter (ARV. pp. 587-8):1 cup-painters, when they are not decorating cups, tend, as is natural enough, to take up other kinds of drinking-vessel, rather than pots. This is a normal skyphos of type A. As to the proportions, Hambidge and Caskey have pointed out that the diameter of the bowl is 1.236 of the height, and that this ratio is very common in skyphoi (Hambidge The Diagonal p. 110; Caskey G. pp. 155-6 and 158). As usual in the Penthesilea Painter, only a few cross-squares interrupt the maeander. At each handle, a design of three palmettes. There is hardly any relief-contour. The ivy-wreath above the pictures is red, with reserved leaves. A. In the middle is a woman, seen from the front, but with head in profile. Her lower part, from the knees downwards, is concealed; and she seems to be rising from a deep place. She lifts her skirt with both hands, and looks up at a goat-man, a Pan, who stumbles towards her, fascinated and frightened. On the other side a second Pan capers and bellows with excitement. The woman wears a peplos, with long overfall, overgirt with a broad band; and on her head a saccos which conceals her hair, except where it escapes, or rather is combed down, in front of the ear. This fashion of hair is frequent when the saccos is worn: one example only, the women on the Ludovisi relief and its Boston counterpart. Helbig, who gave the first account of the vase (Bull. 1881 pp. 148-9), described the woman as Gaia or Persephone; Fröhner, publishing it (Annali 1884 pp. 205-8), pronounced her to be Persephone and the subject her return from Hades. This has been the general opinion since. On an Attic red-figured calyx-krater in Dresden, from the Group of Polygnotos (Anz. 1892 p. 166: A, Brommer Satyroi p. 64: ARV. p. 699 no. 67), a goddess rises, still half concealed, in the presence of Hermes and three Pans: her name is inscribed: it is [ΦΕ]ΡΕΦΑΤΤΑ. Not long ago, however, a small red-figured pelike of about the same period as the Boston skyphos was found at Camiros in Rhodes (Cl. Rh. 4 pp. 103-6 whence, A, Sitz. Bay. 1937=Buschor Feldmäuse p. 16; CV. pl. 1, 2-3 and pl. 2, 1: ARV. p. 720, Erichthonios Painter no. 2). Here again a woman, still half concealed, rises, in the presence of Hermes and Pan. Had there been no inscription, we should have called her Persephone: but there is an inscription, and it is ΑΦΡΟΔΙΤΕ. It is possible, of course, that the humble painter of the pelike made a slip and wrote the wrong name: but a fourth vase shows that Pan is fully in place at the Birth of Aphrodite. This is a fine red-figured hydria, by a member of the Polygnotan Group, in Syracuse (Syracuse 23912: CV. pl. 24: ARV. p. 701 no. 99). Although no names are inscribed, the subject is certainly the Birth of Aphrodite, assisted by Eros, in the presence of the white-haired Moirai, Ares, and Pan. If further proof were needed that this is the subject of the Syracuse hydria, it is provided by a fragment of a bell-krater, the work of Polygnotos, in Agrigento (ARV. p. 678 no. 18): part of the group in the middle remains, Aphrodite and Eros in the same attitudes as before; and the last letters of the name [ΑΦΡΟΔΙ]ΤΕ. It is hard to decide which of the two goddesses is represented on the Boston vase. The costume is not conclusive. The saccos is worn by both. Persephone sometimes wears a peplos with long overfall, overgirt, for instance on a volute-krater by the Niobid Painter in the Louvre (Louvre G 343: Millingen AUM. 1 pl. 24; CV. d pl. 5, 3: ARV. p. 419 no. 15) and on a lost vase (Tischbein 4 pl. 8). (The garment on our vase looks more homely, but that is the naturalism of the Penthesilea Painter.) Aphrodite wears the same garment on the amphoriskos by the Heimarmene Painter in Berlin (Berlin inv. 30036; FR. pl. 170, 2: ARV. p. 738, foot, no. 1). If the Penthesilea Painter could clothe Gaia in this fashion, as he does on his Tityos cup in Munich (Munich 2688; FR. pl. 55; I, Pfuhl fig. 502: Diepolder Penth. pl. 16: ARV. p. 583 no. 2), he might clothe Aphrodite in the same way. In favour, perhaps, of Aphrodite, that the picture is rather nearer to the pelike in Rhodes than to any other vase; and that such pictures as we have of the Return of Persephone are more solemn in tone. The lifting of the skirt might be held to speak for Aphrodite: in the Ludovisi relief, although she does not lift her skirt, it is lifted for her by the Horai: but no one would press such an argument. The motive recurs on the Penthesilea Painter's skyphos in the Cabinet des Médailles (Paris, Cab. Méd. 840: Luynes pll. 30-1; phot. Giraudon 8097, whence Brommer Satyrspiele p. 24: ARV. p. 587 no. 101), where Iris lifts her skirt with both hands to run. The sprig of ivy, hanging or falling, might be used to argue that the figure is neither Aphrodite nor Persephone, but a maenad: but, although it occurs in Dionysiac scenes (ii p. 65), it also occurs in an 'Eos and Tithonos' on a cup by our artist in the Louvre (Louvre G 451: Pottier pl. 146: ARV. p. 584 no. 26), so that it need not have any special significance. 'The same is true of the ivy-wreath running round the top of the vase. The two great cups by the Penthesilea Painter in Munich are both bordered with ivy, although there is nothing Dionysiac in the subjects (Munich 2688 and Munich 2689; ARV. pp. 582-3 nos. 1-2: FR. pl. 6 and FR. pl. 55). Robert's interpretation of the figure as the nymph of a spring (Arch. Märchen pp. 194-5) was contested by Furtwängler (Jb. 6 pp. 112-24) and was later withdrawn by Robert himself (Hermes 29 p. 176). Buschor, after the discovery of the pelike from Camiros, thought that she might be Aphrodite (Feldmäuse p. 17). It has been suggested that the subject is derived from a satyr-play: but it is difficult to believe that the satyrs of the satyr-play chorus were ever replaced by Pans.2 Pans are sometimes goat-footed or goat-shanked; here they have nothing goat-like but the tail, and the head, which, as in the bell-krater by the Pan Painter (ii p. 48), is pure goat, not, as often, human apart from ears and horns. One Pan is hairier than the other. On early representations of Pan see ii p. 48. B. On the reverse of the vase, a maenad and two satyrs. The maenad runs, the satyrs dance along, dancing being more natural to them than walking or running. One satyr leads, thyrsus in hand, looking back; the other would like to lay hands on the maenad, but she turns and gives him a hard look: he shrinks and his tail droops. This is a favourite situation in the Penthesilea Painter and other artists: the nymphs or maenads are vigorous viragos, well able to protect themselves if they wish. The maenad holds a kantharos in her right hand, and in her left a thyrsus, not gripped as usual, but laid lightly on her shoulder and palm. She wears a saccos and a peplos, which has an overfall, and also a long kolpos, over which it is girt with a broad band. To the list of vases by the Penthesilea Painter (ARV. pp. 582-9 and 962) Dietrich von Bothmer has added a cup in New York, New York 10.210.20 (I, rider; A-B, youths, men, and horses), and another in an Italian collection (I, Theseus pursuing Aithra.3 A, a youth with a horse, and another youth, leaving home: parts of male figures on B remain). Add also a lobster-claw askos in Cassel (Eros flying, head frontal, with sash; flower; wreath); and the cup in the Chigi collection at Siena, no. 31 in the list of school-works ARV. p. 626: in Att. V. p. 274 no. 22 I attributed it to the Penthesilea Painter, but later I thought it might be a school-piece only: it is by the painter himself. The subject of the interior picture is Eos and Tithonos, not Eos and Kephalos. No. 109 is now published in CV. Munich pl. 93, 3-4 and pl. 91, 5-8, no. 113 in Riv. Ist. 8 pp. 46-52, whence Anz. 1941 pp. 451-4. No. 48 is now in the Lagunillas collection at Havana. No. 3 is in the house of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. See also ii p. 61.4G. M. A. Richter, AJA 30 (1926), pp. 39-40; P. Jacobstahl 1927, p. 192, pl. 120d; Bruhn 1943, p. 85, note 31; F. Brommer, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 15 (1949/50), pp. 22-23, fig. 27; J. D. Beazley, BABesch 24-26 (1949-1951), p. 19; Metzger 1951, p. 72, note 3; E. Simon, 1959, Die Geburt der Aphrodite, Berlin, De Gruyter, pp. 48-49, fig. 30; Palmer 1962, pp. 46, 48 (fig. 33); S. Karouzou, BCH 86 (1962), pp. 455-456; Alscher 1963, p. 112, note 122; ARV2, pp. 888 (no. 155), 1673; EAA, IV, pp. 389 (fig. 459), 391 (B. Conticello); H. Hoffmann, AntK 7 (1964), p. 68, pl. 19, 2; Metzger 1965, pp. 12-14; Schefold 1967b, p. 62; Para., p. 428, no. 155; Seeberg 1971, p. 74 (as 01.832); A. Peschlow-Bindokat, JdI 87 (1972), p. 96, note 136; Henle 1973, pp. 33-34, 175 (note 14); K. Schefold, AntK 19 (1976), p. 77; Lezzi-Hafter 1976, pp. 27 (note 114), 37 (note 150); H. G. Robinson, Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Sept. 1977, pp. 237 (fig. 15), 238, 241 (note 18); Kossatz-Deissmann 1978, p. 161, note 943; K. Schefold, AntK 22 (1979), p. 116, note 20; Loeb 1979, pp. 92, 131, 309 (Aph 39), 329-330 (Ko11); Fischer-Graf 1980, p. 19, note 202; Brommer 1980, pp. 1 (no. B 2), 36; Schefold 1981, pp. 8-9 (fig. 1), 23, 75, 125, 191, 332, 362; E. Simon, Gnomon 54 (1982), p. 785; Beazley Addenda 1, p. 148; Antidoron 1983, p. 86, note 17 (F. Eckstein); LIMC, II, 1, p. 113, no. 1158, II, 2, pl. 115, illus. (A. Delivorrias, et al.); P. Borgeaud, 1988, The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece (trans. by K. Atlass and J. Redfield), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 146, 247-248 (note 78), pl. 8; M. Maaskant-Kleibrink, BABesch 64 (1989), p. 13, no. 6; Beazley Addenda 2, p. 302; CVA, Karlsruhe, Badisches Landesmuseum, 3, p. 74, under pl. 35 (C. Weiss).