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Lot Essay
This well-published chous depicts Zeus pursuing Ganymede. The god is portrayed wearing a diadem and a chlamys draped across his back and over his left arm, striding left, grasping Ganymede’s left arm with both his hands. Behind him is a staff with a lotus finial. Ganymede is shown with his luxuriant, curly hair secured with a fillet, looking down, with his right arm raised. A chlamys is draped across his back and over his left shoulder. His left leg is outstretched and his right knee bent, as if recoiling from the god’s advance. To the left is a cockerel, a love-gift from the god. An identifying inscription is present above each figure.
As J. Gaunt explains (p. 290 in J.M. Padgett, ed., The Berlin Painter and His World), there are incongruences in Greek literature as it concerns Ganymede’s genealogy and the means of his abduction. Whereas the Iliad describes the youth as the most beautiful of mortal men who was taken to Mount Olympus by the gods to be Zeus’ cup bearer, the Hymn to Aphrodite explains how it was Zeus himself who abducted Ganymede. The most well-known account tells how Zeus descended from the heavens in the form of an eagle, forcibly carrying Ganymede back to Mount Olympus. Ganymede is variously described as the son of Dardanos or of Dardanos’s grandson Tros, the founder of Troy.
As Gaunt notes (op. cit.) the subject of Zeus and Ganymede was popular on Attic vases during the first half of the 5th century. These years were the decades of Athenian conflict with Persia, and the “successful abduction of a Trojan prince by the king of the Greek pantheon may have stuck a chord, providing an apt metaphor for Greek victories in the Persian War.”
As J. Gaunt explains (p. 290 in J.M. Padgett, ed., The Berlin Painter and His World), there are incongruences in Greek literature as it concerns Ganymede’s genealogy and the means of his abduction. Whereas the Iliad describes the youth as the most beautiful of mortal men who was taken to Mount Olympus by the gods to be Zeus’ cup bearer, the Hymn to Aphrodite explains how it was Zeus himself who abducted Ganymede. The most well-known account tells how Zeus descended from the heavens in the form of an eagle, forcibly carrying Ganymede back to Mount Olympus. Ganymede is variously described as the son of Dardanos or of Dardanos’s grandson Tros, the founder of Troy.
As Gaunt notes (op. cit.) the subject of Zeus and Ganymede was popular on Attic vases during the first half of the 5th century. These years were the decades of Athenian conflict with Persia, and the “successful abduction of a Trojan prince by the king of the Greek pantheon may have stuck a chord, providing an apt metaphor for Greek victories in the Persian War.”