AN ATTIC BLACK-FIGURED AMPHORA (TYPE B)
AN ATTIC BLACK-FIGURED AMPHORA (TYPE B)
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AN ATTIC BLACK-FIGURED AMPHORA (TYPE B)

ATTRIBUTED TO THE PAINTER OF THE NICOSIA OLPE, CIRCA 540-530 B.C.

Details
AN ATTIC BLACK-FIGURED AMPHORA (TYPE B)
ATTRIBUTED TO THE PAINTER OF THE NICOSIA OLPE, CIRCA 540-530 B.C.
14 1⁄8 in. (35.9 cm.) high
Provenance
Robert Hess, Basel, acquired by 1960.
with Herbert A. Cahn, Basel, 1989.
Felix Keller, Herrliberg.
Auktion 3, Cahn Auktionen AG, Basel, 19 September 2008, lot 278.
Christian Levett, London, acquired from the above on behalf of the Mougins Museum of Classical Art.
Literature
R. Hess, Raccolta R.H.: Aus einer privaten Antiken-Sammlung, Basel and Stuttgart, 1963, pls. 30-31.
J.D. Beazley, Paralipomena, Oxford, 1971, p. 196, no. 8bis.
J. Boardman, "Greek Art," in M. Merrony, ed., Mougins Museum of Classical Art, Mougins, 2011, p. 63, fig. 18.
M. Merrony, ed., Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins: La collection Famille Levett, Mougins, 2012, p. 32.
M. Burns, "Beware of Greeks bearing arms," Minerva, March/April 2012, p. 26, fig. 4.
Beazley Archive Pottery Database no. 351443.
Exhibited
Mougins Museum of Classical Art, 2011-2023 (Inv. no. MMoCA59).
Musée National du Sport, Nice, Le Corps Sportif, 14 April 2018-16 September 2018.
Musée National du Sport, Nice, Victoires, 6 April-17 September 2023.

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Hannah Fox Solomon
Hannah Fox Solomon Head of Department, Specialist

Lot Essay

The obverse of this vase depicts the Homeric scene of Ajax and Hector battling over the body of the fallen youth Patroklos. Both warriors wear short, patterned chitons and are armed with spears in their upraised arms, greaves, corselets, sheathed swords, circular shields (one with discs and concentric circles as the shield device) and crested Corinthian helmets. To each side stands a draped woman and a nude youth. There is a band of palmette-lotus chain above the scene.

On the other side, Dionysos, holding a rhyton, stands next to a maenad, who wears a nebris over a long chiton. The two stand between two gesturing nude satyrs. There is a band of dotted lotus-bud chain above.

The Painter of the Nicosia Olpe takes his modern name from a fragmentary olpe in the Cyprus Museum. Between the dates of Beazley’s publication of Attic Black-figure Vase-Painters in 1956 and the follow-up Paralipomena, published in 1971, he realized that the two artists (the Painter of the Nicosia Olpe and the Painter of Louvre F 28) he had previously considered related were in fact the same painter (see D. von Bothmer, p. 138, Glories of the Past).

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