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This paper examines the Dyonisian and Orphic symbolic and ritual iconographical aspects of a Centuripe vase from Southern Italy from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Measuring 70.5 by 34.5 centimeters, the basic form of the vase is that of a bell krater without handles set on a high foot and surmounted by a domed lid ending in an egg-shaped finial (Richter 188), formed of separate sections that have been assembled in production. The vase has been assembled from broken pieces, showing little surface damage. In order to facilitate description and analysis, two very similar Centuripe vases, one in New York, the other in Princeton, are referred to. A.Description of the iconographic and decorative aspects of the vase, which depicts a scene of three woman and a man in a ritual scene. One woman holds a thyrsus and tympaneum and there is a tripod. B. Analysis of the elements in relation to the history and development of Greek vase art. Mayo has observed that ‘’death, marriage, and the mysteries is a frequent triad in South Italian and Sicilian vase-painting’’ (283). These aspects will be examined, in the context of feminine themes, to see if they can shed light on the imagery and function of the vase. 1. Feminine aspects 2. Marriage aspects 3. Funerary aspects 4. Dyonisian aspects 5. Orphic aspects C. Interpretation. Ariadne has often been linked with Aphrodite (Otto 182-85). Figure 29 (de Grummond 92) is a wall painting from Pompeii depicting Dionysus and Ariadne watching a contest between Pan and Eros, aptly illustrating the combination of the worlds of Dionysus and Aphrodite. Figure 30 (Lissarague in Masks 21), from a fifth century Bell krater, depicting what could be a puberty initiation scene, illustrates Dionysus and Ariadne in a ritual context. The Maenad holding the rabbit, a well-known fertility symbol could be an aspect linking Ariadne to Aphrodite. The portrait on the Montreal Centuripe vase could serve to indicate that the deceased identified herself with Ariadne, as her features resembles the Ariadne figure on the body. The head can be related to the ascension of Aphrodite in a role of chthonian goddess (Calinescu in Mayo 143), and possibly related to Ariadne’s divinization after her revival by Dionysus, where Zeus placed her crown in the heavens (Seyffert 64). As shown in figures 11-14, Centuripe imagery has been related to the Dionysus and Ariadne figures of the frieze of the Villa of Mysteries.
Opuscula - Annual of the Swedish Institutes at Athens and Rome 11
Painting early death. Deceased maidens on funerary vases in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Opuscula 11 (2018), pp. 127-150. FULL PDF2018 •
The present paper studies the iconography of dead maidens depicted on a red-figured funerary loutrophoros and six white-ground lekythoi in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, all of them dating to the 5th century BC. The scenes painted on the vases under consideration are representative of the iconography employed by Classical Athenian vase-painters for the depiction of deceased maidens, parthenoi. Dead maidens are not frequently seen on funerary clay loutrophoroi, but mostly appear in psychopompoi, tomb visit, and prothesis scenes of white lekythoi, where their premature death before marriage is often emphasized by the fact that they are shown as brides through the use of wedding iconography elements. They are never portrayed being carried by Hypnos and Thanatos, but are only taken to Hades by Hermes and Charon. Even though the loutrophoros is generally considered to be the symbol par excellence of death before marriage, it is not indispensable to the depiction of maiden figures on white lekythoi. However, in scenes on white lekythoi showing a loutrophoros-hydria set up over the tomb as a sema with the deceased maiden portrayed in close proximity to it, special emphasis is placed on the loutrophoros as a symbol of untimely death and eternal virginity.
Arts. Special Issue : Ancient Mediterranean Painting
Three Women Sharing a Mantle in 6th Century BCE Greek Vase-Painting: Plurality, Unity, Family, and Social Bond2019 •
The motif of three women sharing the same mantle is pictured on about a dozen vases dating from the first half of the sixth century BCE. Among these vases, the so-called "François Vase" and a dinos signed by Sophilos (now in London, British Museum) are of particular interest. The wedding of Thetis and Peleus is pictured on both vases. This theme is well-adapted to the representation of a procession of deities in which the Charites, Horai, Moirai, and Muses take part. The main feature of these deities is a shared mantle, which covers and assembles them, emphasizing that these deities are plural by definition. The main study on this iconographical theme remains that by Buchholz, who documented most of the depictions of the "shared-mantle" in ancient Greek vase-painting and small terracottas. The shared-mantle motif has been interpreted successively as a reference to the sacred peplos (in relation to the wedding), a simplification from the painter to avoid painting all the mantles, a sign of emotional/sexual union, a religious gesture, and a depiction of choruses. The present study aims to consider in more detail the "shared-mantle" as an iconographic sign that involves the idea of community, shared identity, and emotional bond.
Bajnok, Dániel (ed.): ALIA MISCELLANEA ANTIQUITATUM. Proceedings of the Second Croatian–Hungarian PhD Conference on Ancient History and Archaeology. (Hungarian Polis Studies 23.) Budapest-Debrecen.
Potential cult scenes on the Dionysian Attic black-figure vases of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest2017 •
2020 •
This work examines visual representations of aryballoi and their hangers. Both items are always depicted together, thus creating a unified entity, that is, separate objects that operate as a unit. Although the aryballos – a small vase primarily employed in a masculine context – is quite conveniently designed for carrying directly in the hand, it is nevertheless always depicted attached to its hanger, and this affects its handling. A comparative case is brought: the alabastron, a vase primarily employed in feminine contexts. Though bearing formal features similar to the aryballos, in visual representations we see the alabastron being handled very differently, mostly through direct contact and not with a hanger. This leads to the conclusion that vase painters actively gendered vases not only according to type, but even by handling. The combination of aryballos and hanger enables more freedom of movement than the alabastron alone, symbolizing the greater freedom enjoyed by men of the time; while the association of alabastron with women perhaps points to their corresponding lack of freedom. These paintings thus encapsulate and symbolize the differences between the sexes.
S. Hemingway and K. Karoglou (eds.), Art of the Hellenistic Kingdoms: From Pergamon to Rome, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia, Yale University Press: New Haven and London
Karoglou, K. 2019. “An Early Hellenistic Votive Statuette in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Dionysos Melanaigis?”2019 •
Studi miscellanei di ceramografia greca
“Religious Images on Athenian Vases: Gifts for the Dead at Spina,” Studi miscellanei di ceramografia greca 6 (2020), 131-157.2020 •
The pitcher, a pouring vessel with one vertical handle (“bellmouthed oinochoe”, after Cook 1997, 22; “pitcher-olpe”, after Davison 1961, 10) was introduced in the Athenian repertoire before the middle of the 8th century BC presumably by the Dipylon Painter (Coldstream 1968, 34). The shape has been seen as the descendant of the shoulder-handled amphora that hardly survives into the Late Geometric (LG) I period (Coldstream 1968, 34), while an origin to the late Phrygian painted and monochrome one-handled round-mouthed jug of the late 8th century BC has also been suggested (Langdon 1993, 205; Mitten 1995, 379–80). The number of painters and workshops that were grouped and named as “the pitcher workshops” by J. N. Coldstream, demonstrates the popularity of the vessel in the Attic repertoire during the second half of the 8th century BC (Kahane 1940, 479, 482; Cook 1947, 151–4; Coldstream 1968, 64–74). The decoration of the surface is almost entirely limited to geometric motifs, and only occasionally birds, single horses or stylised lions are included. Often those vases had a lid with a knob in the form of a miniature vase, which occasionally had the form of a pitcher. The size of those pitchers was more or less fixed between 40 cm and 55 cm and thus fitted to the large scale production of that period. Nonetheless, few pitchers stand out as they grow significantly in height or bear figured decoration or both. Despite their large size that varies between 60 cm and 85 cm in height, these pitchers were placed inside the grave, along with inhumation burials either standing or lying next to the deceased. It becomes evident that the enlargement of the form of these pitchers should have been conditioned by their conspicuous use and symbolic function in funerary contexts. Despite the lack of osteological data, it would seem possible to associate the selective deposition of the giant pitchers in a small number of graves in Athens and Attica with a specific gender-based funerary behaviour. Likewise, some objects of intrinsic value that accompanied certain burials have been related to the burials of young females.
F. Mac Górain éd., Dionysus and Rome. Religion and literature, Berlin, De Gruyter (Trends in Classics), 85-110
Images of Dionysus in Rome: from the archaic to the Augustan period2019 •
This chapter examines Italian images of Dionysus with a view to exploring the dynamics of acculturation of a Greek figure. The aim is to show that images provide major evidence not only for studying art history, but also religious and cultural history; and that far from being representations of cultic ritual, or being mere adaptations of imported iconographic schemes, Roman and Italian images of Dionysus furnish a figurative and reflexive discourse on the very processes of appropriation and domestication. In the case of each representation, the chapter specifies the ways in which Greek forms acquire local inflections, and identify the ways in which these respond and correspond to Roman or Italian rituals as well as to social and political realities. Where possible, the images are put in the context of Roman literary treatments of related phenomena. Two sets of images are subjected to scrutiny: a miscellaneous cluster from the archaic period, and a more homogeneous body of sacro-idyllic landscapes from the Augustan era. The early images are particularly sensitive to cultural analysis. The Augustan images show landscape being marked as ritual space through Dionysian and other motifs; and the taming of nature which they evince coheres with the new Augustan view of Dionysus, which is a response to Mark Antony’s cultivation of an exuberant Dionysian persona. The main pieces of evidence on which this chapter draws are: a set of fragments of statuary believed to come from the sixthcentury sanctuary of Sant’Omobono in the Forum Boarium; some descriptions of the decorative programme of the late-fifth-century temple of Ceres, Liber and Libera; an image of Liber on an inscribed third-century Praenestine cista (CIL I2, 563. Berlin, Charlottenburg, inv. Misc. 6239); Liber on the fourth-century Cista Ficoroni; a Dionysian fresco from Lanuvium; and frescoes and stucco panels from the Villa della Farnesina, all dating to the early Augustan period.
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A Different God? Dionysos and Ancient Polytheism (ed. by Renate Schlesier). Berlin: De Gruyter
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What is in a Vase? Materiality and semiotics of cinerary vases in Egyptian stone and vase shapes in Roman domestic and funerary contexts.2021 •
RES Anthropology and Aesthetics
The Myth of Iphigenia in Fourth-century Funerary Vases of Southern Italy2022 •
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Dionysos in the province. Dionysian motifs on a Poetovian monument2023 •
2022 •
2010 •
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« Can iconography help to interpret Lycophron’s description of the ritual performed by Daunian maidens (Alexandra 1126-1140)? »,2014 •
2012 •
in Sparta in Laconia. Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium held with the British School at Athens and King's and University Colleges, London 6-8 December 1995 ( British School at Athens Studies, Vol. 4) (1998) 82-96
Archaic Laconian Vase-Painting: Some Iconographic Considerations