By: Pieter Broucke, Associate Curator of Ancient Art, Professor of History of Art and Architecture
The first acquisition Middlebury’s Friends of the Art Museum pursued on its founding in 1969, was of an Ancient Greek vase decorated by a unknown artist (Figures 1 and 2). Last spring, however, two scholars identified the painter of this vase. The Middlebury College Museum of Art’s collection is intended to benefit students, support faculty, and engage scholars who are pursuing studies on its works of art. The attribution of this vase is a telltale example of what such a study may entail.
The vase is a lekythos, an oil container consisting of a disk-like foot, a tall cylindrical body, a narrowing neck and a small, cuplike mouth (Figure 3). It was made from clay on the potter’s wheel, with the mouth and single vertical handle added separately. Once the clay vessel was fully formed it was left to harden. After the clay hardened, a decorator applied abstract and figural decorations by means of a dense clay slip, after which the vessel was placed in a kiln and fired.
The single handle on the otherwise directionless object provides the vase with a spatial organization, with the side of the vase opposite the handle becoming the “front” where the center of a decorative frieze—of figures in this case—is located, in the case of our lekythos here, a figural scene. First the artist or a member of his workshop applied to the middle part of the body a pale wash of kaolinite, a clay mineral, rendering the vessel a so-called “white-ground” lekythos.
The white-ground technique was introduced around 530 BCE and became popular a generation later, around 500 BCE, first in black-figure and then also in red-figure vase painting. Some scholars believe that white-ground was introduced to make vases appear more valuable by having them look like alabaster, ivory, or marble. That is almost certainly the case with Middlebury’s alabastron attributed to the Emporion Painter (Figure 4). Alabastra were modeled after Egyptian vessels that were carved, as the name suggests, from alabaster, a soft beige stone (Figure 5).
Yet because the white-ground surfaces rarely expand over the entire vases, as is the case with our lekythos here, other scholars believe the white-ground technique emulated the more prestigious medium of wall painting, of which unfortunately very little survives. In fact, our best evidence for the appearance of ancient Greek wall painting comes from white-ground vases painted in the red-figure style, as exemplified by another lekythos in Middlebury’s collection, for the time being still unattributed (Figure 6). Because white-ground vase painting was less durable, however, vases made using this technique were mostly used for votive vessels and funerary dedications.
On our lekythos, the figural scene was applied atop the “white-ground” wash employing the so-called black-figure technique, in which a clay slip was used to paint the silhouettes of the figures. Interior details such as eyes and drapery folds were then scratched into the slip, revealing the lighter color of the layer below it. During firing in a kiln, the applied slip sintered and turned a dark brown hue, with the result that the figures stand out against the white background.
This figural frieze depicts four figures, two males alternating with two females (Figure 7). The scene is set among vines, indicating we are dealing with perhaps a Dionysiac celebration: the reveler at the center leans on a wine sack and is flanked by two female dancers each beating the rhythm with krotala (musical instruments akin to castañets) in their hands. Another male participant, at the far left, holds a wreath and a stick. Perhaps the revelers are impersonating mythological figures. The reclining male figure, considerably larger than the others, evokes a deity, perhaps Dionysos, the ancient Greek god of wine and merriment. Indeed, the scene appears dynamic, even noisy!
It was rare for ancient vase painters to sign their work. Notable exceptions are Exekias, who signed some of his vases as both potter and painter. Middlebury owns a pottery sherd by a vase painter named Psiax and a sherd associated with Lydos (Figures 8 and 9). Lydos, “the Lydian,” was an artist whom scholars believe migrated from Lydia in Asia Minor to Athens, an important cultural center during the Archaic Period. Both Psiax and Lydos likewise signed several of their vases.
The so-called “name vase” of the “Berlin Painter” is unsigned but its artist is named for the city—Berlin, Germany—in which it is housed (Figure 10). Middlebury owns a beautiful amphora by that important artist (Figure 11). The “Berlin Painter” is the first anonymous Greek artist whose artistic personality Sir John Beazley, an early-twentieth-century British scholar, defined.
Other artists are named for a subject depicted on their best or best-known vase, as is the case with the “Theseus Painter” whose most famous scene pertains to that Athenian hero. A sherd at Middlebury attributed to the Theseus Painter features the heads of Hermes and perhaps Ariadne (Figure 12). The same goes for the “Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl,” to whom is attributed a sherd in Middlebury’s museum featuring a bearded male (Figure 13).
There are other ways in which scholars have named anonymous artists. Among them is the “Elbows Out” painter, named for the exaggerated gestures of nearly all his figures.
But how exactly did Beazley scholars assign ancient Greek vases to specific artists’ hands? That process of attribution was developed by Beazley, adapting the connoisseurial method of Giovanni Morelli, a nineteenth-century Italian art historian who had trained as a medical doctor. Morelli’s method, observing anatomical details artists routinely—and unconsciously—incorporate in their work, had made possible the attribution of Renaissance works of art to specific artists. Beazley expanded on that method and also looked at technical qualities, compositional aspects, and even subject matter.
Other scholars continued Beazley’s work, including Emilie Haspels, a Dutch art historian. She attributed Middlebury’s alabastron to the Emporion Painter, named for Empuries, Emporion in Greek, an ancient harbor town in northeast Spain where four of that artist’s vases were excavated (Figure 4).
In April 2024, Dr. Amy Smith, a Professor and Curator at the University of Reading’s Ure Museum in England, visited Middlebury (Figure 17). Taking advantage of her expertise as a vase painting specialist, I took her to inspect Middlebury’s unattributed lekythos. Because of the clothing that covers the upper torsos of the female dancers, as well as the skirts that are divided horizontally in upper and lower parts, Dr. Smith initially thought it might have been painted by the Emporion Painter, an artist of whom Middlebury already has a vase—the aforementioned alabastron.
A couple of weeks later, another scholar, Dr. Katerina Volioti from the University of Roehampton in London, weighed in at Dr. Smith’s request (Figure 18). Dr. Volioti wrote me that she is generally hesitant with attributions in hastily executed black-figure painting (as is the case with the lekythos here). To her it was the shape of the lekythos that did not quite look right for the Emporion Painter. She further noted that the Emporion Painter was perhaps less likely to depict mythological creatures, even as ‘avatars’ for real people. She stated, “As we have come to understand the [Emporion] Painter, [Dr. Smith and I] are thinking that that artist tends to go for genre scenes, and women in ritual dances are a favorite.” Women conducting a ritual dance are, indeed, depicted on Middlebury’s Emporion Painter alabastron.
Both scholars then redirected their attribution to the Marathon Painter, an artist perhaps a decade younger and a near contemporary of the Emporion Painter. The Marathon Painter too was first identified by Emilie Haspels who named him because the best of the lekythoi excavated in the Marathon Tumulus are by this artist […] Some of his work is on white-ground vases.
Dr. Volioti provided me with an image of another white-ground lekythos by the Marathon Painter now at the British Museum, to serve as a close parallel to the Middlebury lekythos (Figure 19). The similarities are indeed striking. Beginning with the vases themselves, the shape and proportions of both lekythoi are near-identical. The overall organization of the decoration on both vases is likewise similar: palmettes on the shoulders and a band of vertical stripes where the neck begins and, on the body, rows of dots above the figural panel and horizontal bands below it. On the depicted figures, details such as eyes, hands, and feet are strikingly similar. The squiggly line in the column in the British Museum vase is closely related to the squiggly line in the drinking vessel held by the reclining figure on the Middlebury lekythos. The vines in both scenes run and move in similar ways, on both vases augmented with blob-like leaves.
The attribution of Middlebury’s lekythos to the Marathon Painter connects the vase to an important monument where several of this artist’s vases were excavated: the Marathon tumulus, the large burial mound in which the 192 Athenian soldiers who died in the Battle of Marathon of 490 BCE were buried (Figure 20). That funerary mound served as a permanent reminder of the unlikely victory of the Greek forces against the supposedly unbeatable Persian army during the Persian Wars.
Middlebury’s lekythos was acquired on the art market in 1969, before the UNESCO regulations pertaining to provenance and its rules regarding export and trade of archaeological antiquities came into being. Even though its provenance remains unknown, the lekythos’ attribution now connects it to the Marathon Painter, an important Early Classical artist whose work relates to even more important historical events through comparison to his pots buried in the Marathon Tumulus.
With this attribution, the college museum has a new artist represented in its growing list of names of Greek vase painters whose work it owns, among them Psiax, Lydos, the Berlin Painter, the Emporion Painter, the Theseus Painter, and the Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl, all vase painters we have discussed here.
The scholarly field of Greek vase painting is highly specialized and erudite, yet also utterly fascinating. Archeological excavation of vases and pottery sherds brings to light new evidence all the time. In addition, the study of objects long held in private collections and museum worldwide, including at Middlebury, adds to our ever deeper understanding of the ancient world.
