An Attic Black-figured Hydria, attributed to the Swing Painter or to his Circle, circa 485 B.C.

Münzen und Medaillen, Kunstwerke der Antike, Auktion 18, Basel, November 29th, 1958, p. 31, no. 93, pl. 26 (unattributed)

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

ATTRIBUTION

Sir John Beazley’s first thoughts, recorded in the Münzen und Medaillen catalogue, were to associate the hydria with others in Rhodes (BAPD 14411) and Gotha (BAPD 10475) in the circle of the Swing and Princeton Painters. Later, he attributed this hydria to the Swing Painter himself. In her monograph on the Swing Painter, however, Elke Böhr, detached this hydria from this artist’s work on account of the treatment of the horses’ ankles. Instead she proposed to identify the same hand on a hydria in Florence (BAPD 6100), also in the Circle of the Swing Painter. Later (in the Hausmann Festschrift), on the basis of the distinctive raised ring on the neck, she identified a single potter for a series of seven hydriai, including this one and those in Rhodes and Gotha identified by Beazley. Dietrich von Bothmer’s review of Böhr’s monograph (American Journal of Archaeology 88 [1984] [81-84] p. 82) acknowledged this change positively.

SUBJECT

Beazley described the primary scene, one of departure, as “two youths in a chariot”. It seems possible that the further figure’s face was originally in added white. The woman who carries a bolt of folded fabric on her head (interpreted by Krauskopf as a basket) supports Böhr’s proposal that this is instead a wedding procession. The subject is popular on contemporary black-figured vases, where it is treated as a genre: “In the great majority of procession scenes, the identity of the figures is not given” (John H. Oakley and Rebecca H. Sinos, The wedding in ancient Athens, Madison, 1992, p. 28.)

TRADEMARK

Under the foot is an incised graffito, sigma omega. This has been interpreted as the first two letters of the name of Sostratos of Aegina, a famous merchant of whom Herodotus said that he made “the biggest profit of any Greek trader we have reliable information about has ever made from his cargo” (Histories 4.152: R.Waterfield, Herodotus: The Histories, Oxford 1998, p. 286). The discovery in 1970 of a large stone anchor at Gravisca, the harbour for Tarquinia, inscribed with the signature of one Sostratos and a dedication to Aeginetan Apollo has naturally been connected with the merchant in Herodotus, or at least a family member. For the stone anchor, see Lillian Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, revised edition with a supplement by Alan Johnston , Oxford, 1990, 439 E; Alan Johnston, Gravisca: scavi nel santuario 15: Le iscrizioni, Bari, 2000, 15-16, no. 1. Johnston (“The rehabilitation of Sostratos,” Parola del Passato 27 [1972], pp. 416-423) has further argued that this type of graffito should be connected with the numerous so-called SO amphorae (which are Attic) and also with graffiti on black-glaze Laconian pottery. “So-, be he Herodotos’ Aeginetan or not, was the most active exporter of Attic painted pottery known to us and a fortiori likely to have been a major figure in other aspects of late sixth century trade” (Johnston,op. cit., 2006 p. 59).

Published

Sir John Davidson Beazley, Paralipomena: additions to Attic black-figure vase-painters and to Attic red-figure vase-painters, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1971, p. 135, 98 bis (as Swing Painter).

Mary B. Moore, Horses on black-figured Greek vases of the Archaic Period, doct. diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1972, p. 99, A 675 (as Swing Painter)

Ingrid Krauskopf, “Eine attisch schwarzfigurige Hydria in Heidelberg,” Archäologischer Anzeiger vol. 92, 1977, p. 20, no. 25 (as Swing Painter)

Alan W. Johnston, Trademarks on Greek Vases, Warminster, 1979, p. 83, Type 22 A, no. 1

Elke Böhr, Der Schaukelmaler, Mainz, 1982, pp. 20, 64 (n. 171), 106-107 (U 15), pl. 158 a (as Manner of the Swing Painter)

Elke Böhr, “Weitere Werke des Schaukelsmalers,” in Bettina von Freytag gen. Löringhoff, Dietrich Mannsperger, Friedhelm Prayon et al., Praestant Interna. Festschrift für Ulrich Hausmann, Tübingen, 1982, p. 219, n. 62

Carlos Picón, Classical antiquities from private collections in Great Britain. A loan exhibition in aid of the Ashmole Archive, London, 1986, p. 20, no. 11, pl. 3

Alan W. Johnston, Trademarks on Greek Vases, 2006, p. 59, Type 22 A, no. 1

Beazley Archive Pottery Database (BAPD), no. 351007 (https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/record/D0707F20-D023-4313-9AF1-121AB4366B71)