.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The obverse of this pelike shows a pursuit scene with a youth chasing a maiden. The youth is dressed as a hunter, wielding a spear and wearing a short chiton and a chlamys pinned at his shoulder and draped across his outstretched arm; a petasos is suspended behind. The maiden flees to the right but looks back. A related pursuit scene on a bell-krater by the Komaris Painter, now in the Louvre, labels the youth “Theseus,” and it is probable that the hero is depicted on this pelike also (see p. 223 in S. Matheson, Polygnotos and Vase Painting in Classical Athens).
Pursuit scenes were popular on Attic vases during the early Classical period. According to E.D. Reeder (p. 339 in Pandora: Women in Classical Greece), “Because of the presence in these scenes of weapons used in hunting, the viewer is obviously intended to understand that the pursuit of a woman is being linked to the pursuit of a quarry. The sexual undercurrents of hunting are well known, and in Greek culture the analogy between hunting and courtship finds many expressions.” The power dynamic in such scenes is complicated by the fact that the woman often turns back to look at her pursuer, as here. Reeder (op. cit.) equates the female’s gaze with “mutual aggressiveness, responding to her pursuer.”
Oakley (p. 75, "Associates and Followers of the Berlin Painter," in J.M. Padgett, ed., The Berlin Painter and His World) remarks that the Achilles Painter “is the Classical vase-painter par excellence and the single most important follower/student of the Berlin Painter.”
Pursuit scenes were popular on Attic vases during the early Classical period. According to E.D. Reeder (p. 339 in Pandora: Women in Classical Greece), “Because of the presence in these scenes of weapons used in hunting, the viewer is obviously intended to understand that the pursuit of a woman is being linked to the pursuit of a quarry. The sexual undercurrents of hunting are well known, and in Greek culture the analogy between hunting and courtship finds many expressions.” The power dynamic in such scenes is complicated by the fact that the woman often turns back to look at her pursuer, as here. Reeder (op. cit.) equates the female’s gaze with “mutual aggressiveness, responding to her pursuer.”
Oakley (p. 75, "Associates and Followers of the Berlin Painter," in J.M. Padgett, ed., The Berlin Painter and His World) remarks that the Achilles Painter “is the Classical vase-painter par excellence and the single most important follower/student of the Berlin Painter.”