ATTRIBUTED TO THE LEAFLESS GROUP, CIRCA EARLY 5TH CENTURY B.C.

Details

AN ATTIC BLACK-FIGURED EYE-CUP
ATTRIBUTED TO THE LEAFLESS GROUP, CIRCA EARLY 5TH CENTURY B.C.
8 ½ in. (21.5 cm.) diam. Excl. handles

Provenance

Spencer Joshua Alwyne Compton, 2nd Marquess of Northampton (1790-1851), Castle Ashby; and thence by descent.
The Castle Ashby Vases; Christie's, London, 2 July 1980, lot 56.
Beazley Archive Pottery Database, no. 208.

Literature

D. von Bothmer, Amazons in Greek Art, Oxford, 1956, no. 57bis, pp. 227-228.
J. Boardman and M. Robertson (eds), Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Great Britain XV, Castle Ashby, Northampton, Oxford, 1979, p. 18, no. 47, pls. 28.4, 29.2 & 29.3.
P. Devambez and A. Kauffmann-Samaras, ”Amazones,” Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, vol. I, 1981, p. 628, no. 657, pl. 511 a, b.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

Between the eyes on each side is an Amazon moving to the right but looking back. She wears a high-crested Attic helmet, an animal skin over a short chiton, and greaves, and carries a spear and a Boeotian shield. The shield blazon on one side is a double three-leaved flower, resembling a thunderbolt; on the other, it is four loops and dots with a central cross. There are vine branches with fruit in the field. Flanking the eyes on one side, an ithyphallic satyr holding a rhyton; on the other side there is a maenad to the left, wearing a fillet and a chiton, and a satyr to the right, also holding a rhyton. Below each handle is an ivy leaf. In the tondo there is a gorgoneion.

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