Property from the Collections of the late Jean and the late Alexandre Zafiropulo
An Attic Black-figured Hydria, attributed to the Swing Painter or to his Circle, circa 485 B.C.
Auction Closed
December 3, 04:39 PM GMT
Estimate
50,000 - 70,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
with tall, offset neck, offset flaring mouth, and torus foot, the body decorated with a himation-clad pair standing in a four-horse chariot accompanied by a woman wearing a peplos and carrying a bolt of folded clothes on her head, a boy standing before them and looking back, the shoulder painted with a fight over a fallen warrior flanked by converging riders, the fallen warrior drawn at a much larger scale than his adversaries collapsing on his left elbow and raising his large hoplite shield to defend himself, and wearing a chitoniskos under a cuirass, high-crested helmet probably of Corinthian type, and greaves, his opponents brandishing spears above their heads, and wearing animal skins belted at the waist over chitoniskoi, crested helmets of Corinthian type, and greaves, the right hand warrior’s shield emblazoned with the letter kappa, rays above the base, addorsed ivy flanking the scene, tongues on the shoulder below the neck, and rosettes around the rim, the details in added red and white.
Height 44 cm.
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
Published
Carlos A. Picón, Classical antiquities from private collections in Great Britain: a loan exhibition in aid of the Ashmole archive, Sotheby’s, London, 1986, no. 11, pl. 3
Beazley Archive Pottery Database, no. 351007 (https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/record/D0707F20-D023-4313-9AF1-121AB4366B71)
“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.
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