Perseus Art and Archaeology Browser

ID:

aa_4889

Beazley Number:

340563

Type:

Vase

Date:

ca. -540

Period:

Archaic

Painter:

Attributed to the Swing Painter

Dimensions:

H. 49.5 cm., D. of mouth 20.3 cm., W. 34.4 cm.

Ware:

Attic Black Figure

Shape:

Amphora

Shape Description

Amphora Type B. Standard mid-sixth century type with flaring mouth, round handles, and inverted echinus foot.

Decoration Description

Side A: Herakles and Busiris. Herakles, dressed in a short chiton and the skin of the Nemean Lion, with a quiver hanging at his waist, strides to the right, holding one Egyptian priest upside-down by the ankle and grasping another by the neck. Before him the Egyptian king Busiris, already slain, lies slumped over an altar, apparently made of bricks and decorated with rosettes. Three other Egyptians flee at right and left, looking back in alarm. Between the legs of the one at left, there is a small stool. In the field, at upper right, a nonsense inscription. Side B: youth setting out between two draped men and two warriors. The warrior at left wears a fawn-skin (nebris) over his chiton and is armed with a helmet, greaves, and a shield; the one at right has only a shield. The youth in the center wears crossed baldrics for a quiver or sword, but neither piece of equipment is visible. As Cedric Boulter has suggested (Boulter 1966, p. 6), this scene may represent warriors arming.

Added red: A, calyxes of lotuses; hair, beards, and stripes in garments of some Egyptians; fillet of elderly Egyptian at right; chiton and quiver of Herakles; cores of rosettes on altar. B, central leaves on palmettes; hair of youth and that of warrior at right; stripes in mantles and in chiton skirt of youth; chiton, fillet, and greaves of warrior at left; skirt and dots on bodice of chiton worn by warrior at right. Added white: A, claws and teeth of lion's skin; robes of two Egyptians; hair, necklace, and knife-handle of another; various small dots on altar and clothing. B, blazons on shields; base of helmet-crest and spots on nebris of warrior at left; crossed baldrics of youth; dot-rosettes on clothing.

The Cincinnati amphora is a true masterpiece of the Attic black-figure technique; in addition, the main scene on this vase is one of the earliest depictions of the rather uncommon theme of Herakles and Busiris. Thus it seems essential that we discuss the vase in the catalogue even though its condition has prevented its inclusion in the exhibition.

The myth of Herakles and Busiris, which takes place in Egypt, appears in Greece first in vase-painting (mid-sixth century B.C.), then (about a century later) in literature, with Herodotus (Hdt. 11.45), who thought the tale impious and foolish. There is something brilliantly comical about the Swing Painter's conception, about his vengeful, hulking Herakles, who by sheer brute force, wielding an Egyptian as a human club, manages to worst the entire company, including the pharaoh, Busiris. E. H. Gombrich has written of this representation, "There is little doubt that this humorous account of Herakles' exploits among the Egyptians was inspired by Egyptian renderings of some victorious campaign ... (one of) the many pictorial chronicles that shows a gigantic figure of Pharaoh confronting an enemy stronghold with its pygmy defenders begging for mercy, which the Greeks had seen" (Art and Illusion [New York 1961] 135. At some point Greek mythographers interpreted the Egyptian topos as a familiar idiom, making this adventure an early part (like the battle against Antaios) of Herakles' last labor, "the quest for the Golden Apples of the Hesperides."

Egypt has been plagued by drought, and its pharaoh Busiris, desperate for a solution, consults a seer, Phrasios of Cyprus, who tells him that the first stranger in his land should be sacrificed to Zeus. The remedy may have been effective, but the cure proved worse than the disease. With little interest in tourism, Busiris, in order to insure continued protection from the gods, victimizes every foreigner who journeys to Egypt. Herakles the eternal, now the international defender, could not tolerate such inhospitable behavior; the rights and safety of travelers were sacred to Zeus Paraxenos. The hero feigns surrender to the Egyptians and relinquishes his accustomed weapons, the club and bow. Just as he is about to be sacrificed, Herakles turns the tables and at least in the Swing Painter's representation, has the pharaoh sacrificed on the altar in his stead.

As Boulter has pointed out (Boulter 1966, p. 3), the Swing Painter was wise to choose a one-piece amphora for such a vigorous, action-packed scene. Traditionally, this type of amphora has separate, framed picture-zones and is largely black, the dark-ground forming a contrast to the light-red panels. These features, as well as the unity of the form of the vase the neck and body are made together in one motion of the potter's hands provide not only scale but increased dramatic power. By comparison, a black-figure neck amphora, (see Moon 1979, #56), where the neck is made separately from the body and the surface of the vase is primarily red, does not usually work to the same narrative advantage. The black figures on a neck-amphora appear thinner, less substantial, and more ornamental simply because they are not the same color as the field and because the picture-zone is not framed. It took Exekias to break the limitations of the neck-amphora in terms of narrative power in his famous example in the British Museum, London B210, which shows Achilles killing the Amazon queen Penthesilea (ABV, 144, no. 7).

The Swing Painter seems to have preferred to decorate amphorae of type B, although his hand is evident on a large number of neck-amphorae. His name-vase in Boston, which shows a girl seated on a swing, is a type B amphora (ABV, 306, no. 41). "This is a large and comical group," wrote Beazley of the Swing Painter. "Those who tire of the symmetry, sobriety, and normality of Group E," he added, "will like the looser composition of the Swinger, his haphazard anatomy, quaint touches, and unusual subjects" (BSA 32 [1931-32] 12). Though the painter has given his Egyptians uncommon details of physiognomy, such as high foreheads, curly hair, and white eyebrows, he has not made their features negroid, like those of the priests in a version of the myth on a pelike in Athens by the Pan Painter (ARV2, 554, no. 82). The composition of the Swing Painter's scene of Herakles and Busiris may, at first glance, seem informal, but it is strictly organized, having a central focus with design-elements paired antiphonally around this axis. For example, the outermost figures with daggers adopt the same pose: they run away but look back. On either side of the king and hero, there is a priest, each with a seemingly weightless body, each wearing a white tunic of similar length. In terms of anatomy, the painter may have rendered the calf of Herakles' right leg somewhat awkwardly, but, nonetheless, he has given the hero a most convincing death-grip on one Egyptian's neck.

For his representation of the Busiris myth, the Swing Painter appears to have borrowed and adapted some essential elements from the traditional iconography employed by Attic vase-painters to depict the death of Priam. Black-figure artists normally portray Priam, the elderly king of Troy, stretched out over an altar, either already slain or begging for mercy from his assailant, Achilles' vengeful son, Neoptolemos. The two versions of the scene are exemplified, respectively, on an amphora of type B in Bonn by the Princeton Painter, the Swing Painter's master (ABV, 299, no. 1), and on a neck-amphora in the Louvre by a contemporary of the Swing Painter, the Bucci Painter (Louvre; see Para., 137, no. 7 bis). On the amphora in Cincinnati, the pharaoh Busiris lies slain upon an altar in much the same manner as King Priam on the Bonn amphora. Many black-figure representations of the story of Priam, moreover, show Neoptolemos wielding the body of Astyanax, Hektor's young son and Priam's grandson, as a weapon. This gruesome touch, which is not part of the literary account of the legend, comes from the narrative of the death of Astyanax by Lesches (The Little Iliad, Par. 14), according to which Neoptolemos seized the child by his foot and hurled him from the walls of Troy. A vivid portrayal of Neoptolemos threatening King Priam with the body of Astyanax appears on the Bucci Painter's neck-amphora in the Louvre. Very much the same motif is employed by the Swing Painter to portray Herakles on the Cincinnati amphora. Having already dispatched Busiris, the hero has grasped one of his victim's priests by the ankle and prepares to use him as a club against another, whom he has seized by the throat. This particular treatment of the myth seems to be unique to the Swing Painter. Two similar depictions do exist, one on a Caeretan hydria in Vienna, dated ca. 530 B.C., the other on the pelike in Athens, of ca. 470, by the Pan Painter (supra). On both of these vases, Herakles is using an Egyptian as a human club, but Busiris is not present.

Graffiti

Nonsense inscription in upper right of field on side A.

Collection:

Cincinnati Art Museum

Museum purchase.

Citations and Bibliography

Para, 134.23 ter.

Moon No. 34

Moon 1979, p. 58-59

D. von Bothmer, AJA 61 (1957) 105; AQ 22 (1959) 272, center, 2; Boulter 1966; Para., 134, no. 23 ter.; Brommer 1973, 34, A, no. 2; Boardman 1974, fig. 143.