Although both sides of this amphora show the same subject, the Amasis Painter has introduced subtle variations in the sequence of action and in detail. On one side, a warrior holds a greave (shin guard); on the other side, he adjusts it on his leg. A nude youth with a spear and a wreath is replaced in the opposite scene by a woman with a spear and an aryballos (oil flask). This is an interesting conflation of two important themes because both the wreath and the oil flask are usually associated with athletes, not warriors. The male figures have the same long hair and proud stance as contemporary marble statues and reliefs of kouroi (youths) and embody the same ideal of young manhood.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta amphora (jar)
Artist:Attributed to the Amasis Painter
Period:Archaic
Date:ca. 550 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; black-figure
Dimensions:H. 15 3/8 in. (39.1 cm) diameter 6 7/8 in. (17.5 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1906
Accession Number:06.1021.69
Richter, Gisela M. A., Marjorie J. Milne, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1922. Shapes of Greek Vases. New York.
Richter, Gisela M. A. and Marjorie J. Milne. 1935. Shapes and Names of Athenian Vases. pp. 3–4, fig. 3, New York: Plantin Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 58, 198, pl. 38a, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A., Grace Crowfoot, and Donald Benjamin Harden. 1956. "Part I: Ceramics from c. 700 B.C. to the Fall of the Roman Empire." A History of Technology: The Mediterranean Civilizations and the Middle Ages, c. 700 B.C. to c. A.D. 1500, Vol. 2, Charles Singer, Eric John Holmyard, Alfred Rupert Hall, and Trevor Williams, eds. p. 265, pl. 18a, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Beazley, John D. 1956. Attic Black-figure Vase-painters. pp. 150, 687, no. 2, 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. 62, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
von Bothmer, Dietrich and Alan L. Boegehold. 1985. The Amasis Painter and His World: Vase-Painting in Sixth-Century B.C. Athens. no. 1, pp. 70–73, 79, 105, Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Beazley, John D. 1986. The Development of Attic Black Figure, Vol. 24, 2nd ed.. p. 101 [p. 54 n. 49], pl. 53, 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. pp. 419–20, 432, Amsterdam: Allard Pierson Museum.
Isler, Hans Peter. 1994. "Der Töpfer Amasis und der Amasis-Maler. Bemerkungen zur Chronologie und zur Person." Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, 109: p. 110.
Mackay, Anne. 1996. "Time and Timelessness in the Traditions of Early Greek Oral Poetry and Archaic Vase-Painting." Voice into Text: Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece, Mnemosyne Supplement: p. 44 n. 4.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 79, pp. 80, 421, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
de Puma, Richard Daniel. 2013. Etruscan Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 129 n. 171 [p. 312], New Haven and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Oakley, John H. 2020. A Guide to Scenes of Daily Life on Athenian Vases. p. 168, fig. 8.4, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
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