22. 03.787 HORSE-HEAD RHYTON Silens and maenad PLATE IX
Greatest length, 0.251 m.; diameter of mouth, 0.122 m. Broken and repaired; the surface of the figures worn. The front edge of the maenad's leopard-skin and the line of her leg showing against it retouched. Parts of the animal's head painted white; in its nostrils and mouth, bright red laid over the white. The contours of the figures and of the bridle-straps done in relief lines. Red used for the maenad's girdle, for the wreaths worn by her and by the pursuing silen, for the ivy wreath on the border below the figures, and for the meaningless letters in the field. Brown used for the maenad's hair and for the body-hair of the pursuer. Ann. Rep. 1903, p. 74, no. 77. Tonks, Brygos, no. 60, pp. 91, 115. Buschor, Griechische Vasenmalerei 2, fig. 10, p. 155. The same, Münchner Jahrbuch, 1919, p. 15, fig. 23. Beazley, V.A., p. 92. Hoppin, i, p. 127, no. 33. Beazley, Att. V., p. 182, no. 84. The rhyton is in the form of a bridled horse's head developing at the top into a cylindrical cup with flaring lip and furnished with a loop-handle. The animal's ears are laid against this cup. In front, between the ears, an excrescence, perhaps a conventionalized forelock, which serves a practical purpose: when the rhyton is laid down with the handle upward, it is supported in stable equilibrium on the animal's nose and the tip of the excrescence. The outer surface of the ears is left in the colour of the clay, their inner surface is painted white; their rims and tips are black. The eyelids are outlined in black; two long black lines extend downwards from the tear-duct of the left eye, but not of the right. The pupil is bordered by a reserved oval line on the black iris. The remainder of the eyeball is white; and a strip of white runs round the eye. The muzzle is white, with black dots on it to represent hairs. There are traces of red in the nostrils. The teeth are white, their interstices red. Remains of red also on the gums, the inner surface of the mouth, and the tongue. A strip of white runs up the forehead, widening towards the top; and there are remains of a similar strip on the bottom of the jaw. The bridle consists of a series of black straps holding a ring on either side of the mouth. The straps were first drawn in outline and decorated with dots, which are still faintly visible through the black varnish. The upper portion of the rhyton, painted black within as well as without, has a tongue pattern at the rim and, near the bottom, a reserved ground line. The black strip below this has an ivy wreath painted on it in white. Each of the three fields formed by the handle and the horse's ears contains a single figure. On the left side a silen, open-mouthed and with arms waving, rushes to right in pursuit of a maenad. His bald head is wreathed; a leopard-skin, tied about his neck by the front paws, hangs down his back. Below, a drinking-horn which he has dropped in his excitement. On the right side the maenad runs from him with head turned back. She holds a thyrsus, with berries round its top, in her right hand, and with her extended left lifts one end of the leopard-skin tied about her shoulders. Her advanced left leg escapes from the folds of her Ionic chiton. The looped end of the girdle appears under the kolpos of the dress. She is wreathed and has fair hair hanging loose. On the front a second silen crouches on the ground to left, ready to spring upon the maenad. He wears high boots with flaps, and has a leopard-skin tied about his shoulder. In all three fields meaningless letters. About 490-480 B.C. By the Brygos painter, to whom eight plastic rhyta of various forms are assigned by Beazley, Att. V., p. 181, nos. 77-84. Three of them are horse's heads, the others being in Orvieto1 and in Petrograd. The latter is figured in Compte Rendu, 1881, title-page and pp. 5, 49, 60, and described by Stephani, Vasensammlung der kais. Eremitage, no. 407. This and the example in Boston had already been attributed to 'Brygos' by Tonks, op. cit. The animal represented has been held to be a horse, a mule, or an ass. But the ears of our head are not long enough for an ass; cf. the true donkey's head on a black-figured kantharos in London, B.M. Cat. ii, p. 210, London E 378, illustrated in Buschor, Münchner Jahrbuch, l.c., p. 12, fig. 17, which is wrongly called a mule by Buschor and Walters. And of the remaining alternatives the first is to be preferred. Beazley adds two other mule- or donkey-heads: (1) Noël des Vergers, Pl. II; evidently much restored, and the shape impossible, but bits of it seem right, and Brygan. (2) Naples 2961 (Museo Borbonico, v, Pl. 20, 1; Panofka, Trinkhörner, Pl. 2, 1-2). Not far from the Brygan group.2Richter & Milne 1935, p. 28, fig. 178; ARV, p. 255, no. 143; Chase 1950, p. 70, fig. 76; S. Howard and F. P. Johnson, AJA 58 (1954), p. 199, no. 1; Caskey & Beazley, II, p. 100, no. 22; Levi & Stenico 1956, p. 18, fig. 21; Hoffmann 1962, p. 10, no. 10, pl. 3, 1; Chase & Vermeule 1963, pp. 92, 96, 108-109, fig. 89a-c; ARV2, p. 382, no. 189; Wegner 1973, pp. 110-111; E. Berger, in E. Berger, et al., Antike Kunstwerke aus der Sammlung Ludwig, II (1982), Basel, Archäologischer Verlag, p. 287, note 14; Antidoron 1983, pp. 61, 63 (fig. 2), 73 (as 06.1099) (H. Hoffmann); Beazley Addenda 2, p. 228.