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Lot Essay
According to A.D. Trendall (p. 97 in Red Figure Vases of South Italy and Sicily), the Baltimore Painter "is the most important and significant of the later Apulian vase-painters..." He decorates a wide range of shapes, both large and small, and many feature multi-figure mythological scenes framed by elaborate ornament.
The vase presented here offers figural scenes in two registers on both sides of the body and on the shoulders of the obverse, the most important of which depicts Oinomaos and Pelops taking the oath. Oinomaos was the King of Pisa, and father of Hippodamia. Because of a prophecy that foretold he would be killed by his son-in-law, he killed eighteen suitors after defeating them in a chariot race, and affixed their heads to columns in his palace. Pelops, son of the King of Lydia, asked Hippodamia for her hand, and in preparation for the race, the pair bribed Oinomaos' charioteer Myrtilos to replace the metal lynch pins of his chariot with pins of wax. During the close race Oinomaos' chariot crashed, killing him, but Myrtilos survived. When he approached the couple to collect his debt (or to claim Hippodamia for his own), Pelops hurled him off a cliff, but not before Myrtilos could utter a curse upon him, which thereafter would haunt Pelops and his descendants, the House of Atreus.
Depicted here are a fully-armed Oinomaos, Hippodamia and Pelops standing before an altar, making a pledge of fair conduct for the forthcoming chariot race. The severed head of one of the earlier suitors hangs above. To the left a youth brings a ram to sacrifice while a winged Erinys looks on. To the right, Nike prepares to crown Pelops, with a draped youth looking on. The scene was treated more than once by the Baltimore Painter (see for example pl. 325, 2 in A.D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, The Red-figured Vases of Apulia) and may reflect the play, Oinomaos, by Euripides or the earlier play of the same name by Sophocles.
The vase presented here offers figural scenes in two registers on both sides of the body and on the shoulders of the obverse, the most important of which depicts Oinomaos and Pelops taking the oath. Oinomaos was the King of Pisa, and father of Hippodamia. Because of a prophecy that foretold he would be killed by his son-in-law, he killed eighteen suitors after defeating them in a chariot race, and affixed their heads to columns in his palace. Pelops, son of the King of Lydia, asked Hippodamia for her hand, and in preparation for the race, the pair bribed Oinomaos' charioteer Myrtilos to replace the metal lynch pins of his chariot with pins of wax. During the close race Oinomaos' chariot crashed, killing him, but Myrtilos survived. When he approached the couple to collect his debt (or to claim Hippodamia for his own), Pelops hurled him off a cliff, but not before Myrtilos could utter a curse upon him, which thereafter would haunt Pelops and his descendants, the House of Atreus.
Depicted here are a fully-armed Oinomaos, Hippodamia and Pelops standing before an altar, making a pledge of fair conduct for the forthcoming chariot race. The severed head of one of the earlier suitors hangs above. To the left a youth brings a ram to sacrifice while a winged Erinys looks on. To the right, Nike prepares to crown Pelops, with a draped youth looking on. The scene was treated more than once by the Baltimore Painter (see for example pl. 325, 2 in A.D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, The Red-figured Vases of Apulia) and may reflect the play, Oinomaos, by Euripides or the earlier play of the same name by Sophocles.