ATTRIBUTED TO THE CIRCLE OF THE ANTIMENES PAINTER, CIRCA LATE 6TH CENTURY B.C.

The shoulder panel on this vessel is decorated on one side with a pair of eyes framed by thin undulating brows and a nose at the centre, with Dionysus seated to the left, a rhyton in his left hand, vines in his right hand, and a satyr running to the right, looking back over his shoulder. The reverse is decorated with a similar Dionysiac scene. Only a small number of Attic black-figured amphorae feature figural decoration confined to the shoulders with central eyes. Many, as with this present example, were thought by Beazley to be by the Antimenes painter and his circle. Eyes had appeared on Greek vases during the seventh century, most frequently on drinking vessels, sometimes with eyebrows, and on rarer occasions, with noses. Although there is debate on the function of the eyes, with some scholars interpreting that they were apotropaic, it can be argued that they were simply decorative motifs that had an anthropomorphic effect, making the vase humorous and livelier. For a full discussion on the depiction of eyes in Greek vase-painting, see A.G. Mitchell, Greek Vase-Painting and the Origins of Visual Humour, Cambridge, 2009, pp.36-40. For a similar work, which has been attributed to the Antimenes painter, with a frieze on the shoulder, cf. no. 3 in, The Painter's Eye: The Art of Greek Ceramics, Greek Vases from a Swiss Private Collection and other European Collections, Geneva - New York, 2006, pp. 12-15.