Around the lip, pygmies fighting cranes Around the main surface of the handle, three satyrs; on the ends, Hermes and Perseus; on top, two tritons
Both potter and painter, Nearchos was one of the great artists active about 570 B.C. His son, Tleson, was the major potter of Little Master cups in the succeeding generation. Both were literate; they inscribed their vases. This aryballos is exceptional for the precision and vigor of the figures.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta aryballos (oil flask)
Artist:Signed by Nearchos as potter
Period:Archaic
Date:ca. 570 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; black-figure
Dimensions:H. 3 1/16 in. (7.8 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Purchase, The Cesnola Collection, by exchange, 1926
Object Number:26.49
Signature: Signed by Nearchos as potter
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1926. "The Classical Collection: Rearrangement and Important Accessions." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 21(4), part 2: p. 10.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 88, fig. 55, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1930. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 88, fig. 55, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. and Marjorie J. Milne. 1935. Shapes and Names of Athenian Vases. p. 16, fig. 103, New York: Plantin Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 57, 197, pls. 37d, f, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Beazley, John D. 1956. Attic Black-figure Vase-painters. pp. 83, 682, no. 4, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bandinelli, Ranuccio Bianchi. 1958. Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica, Classica e Orientale, Vol. 5. p. 389, fig. 514, Rome: Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.
Beazley, John D. 1963[1942]. Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, Vols. 1 and 2, 2nd ed. p. 1607, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Beazley, John D. 1971. Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters [2nd edition]. p. 30, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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Maffre, Jean-Jacques. 1975. "Collection Paul Canellopoulos (VIII): Vases béotiens." Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 99(1): p. 438 n. 92.
von Bothmer, Dietrich and Alan L. Boegehold. 1985. The Amasis Painter and His World: Vase-Painting in Sixth-Century B.C. Athens. pp. 39–40, fig. 21, Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Beazley, John D. 1986. The Development of Attic Black Figure, Vol. 24, 2nd ed.. p. 99 [p. 38 n. 11], pl. 32, 5–6, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Brijder, Herman A. G. 1991. Siana Cups II: The Heidelberg Painter, Allard Pierson Series: Studies in Ancient Civilization, Vol. 8. fig. 120, Amsterdam: Allard Pierson Museum.
Cohen, Beth and University of Chicago Press. 1991. "The Literate Potter: A Tradition of Incised Signatures on Attic Vases." Metropolitan Museum Journal, 26: pp. 53, 85, figs. 4–5.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1994. Vol. 7: Oidipous-Theseus. "Perseus," p. 341, no. 153; "Psoleas," p. 568, no. 2, pl. 435; "Pygmaioi," p. 595, no. 2, pl. 467, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Lissarrague, Francois. 2000. "A Sun-Struck Satyr in Malibu." Periplous: Papers on Classical Art and Archaeology Presented to Sir John Boardman, Mr. Gocha R. Tsetskhladze, A. J. N. W. Prag, and Anthony M. Snodgrass, eds. p. 192 n. 5, London: Thames and Hudson.
Sparkes, Brian. 2000. "Small World: Pygmies and Co.." World and Image in Ancient Greece, N. Keith Rutter and Brian A. Sparkes, eds. pp. 86–8, fig. 5.1, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Mackay, Anne. 2001. "The Frontal Face and ‘You’. Narrative Disjunction in Early Greek Poetry and Painting." Acta Classica. Proceedings of the Classical Association of South Africa, 44: p. 25 n. 36.
Malagardis, Nassi-Athanasia. 2003. "'Aparxai d'un ceramiste du temps de Nearchos au sanctuaire de la Nymphe." Griechische Keramik im kulturellen Kontext: Akten des Internationalen Vasen-Symposions in Kiel vom 24.-28.9.2001. Veranstaltet durch das Archäologische Institut der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Bernhard Schmaltz and Magdalene Söldner, eds. pp. 32–4, fig. 3.3, Münster: Scriptorium.
Mertens, Joan R. and Beth Cohen. 2006. "Attic White Ground: Potter and Painter." The Colors of Clay: Special Techniques in Athenian Vases, Beth Cohen, ed. pp. 187–88, 193, fig. 2, n. 14, Malibu: J. Paul Getty Trust.
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Hedreen, Guy Michael. 2016. The Image of the Artist in Archaic and Classical Greece: Art, Poetry, and Subjectivity. pp. 205–7, fig. 34, New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2020. ART = Discovering Infinite Connections in Art History. pp. 069, 271, New York: Phaidon Press.
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