ATTRIBUTED TO THE PAINTER OF THE DANCING SATYRS, CIRCA 500 B.C.

Details

AN ETRUSCAN BLACK-FIGURED NECK AMPHORA
ATTRIBUTED TO THE PAINTER OF THE DANCING SATYRS, CIRCA 500 B.C.
The obverse with Hercle battling the Minotaur, the hero clad in his lionskin, his curly hair in added white, depicted advancing to the left, wielding his knobby club in his raised right hand, grasping the left arm of the Minotaur with his left hand, the nude horse-headed monster fleeing to the left, his head turned back, a single horn emerging from the center of his forehead, his right arm bent acutely to his chest; the reverse with two well-endowed nude satyrs moving to the right but looking back, each with short hair in added white, and cloven hooves, the satyr to the right holding a mantle in added white; lotus bud chain on the shoulders, palmettes on the neck, a band of ivy below the rim, palmettes and tendrils below the handles
15½ in. (39.4 cm.) high

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 21 May 1992, lot 228.

Lot Essay

According to Greek mythology, it was Theseus who killed the bull-headed monster in the Cretan labyrinth, rather than Herakles (Hercle), as here. In reference to the misunderstood scene, Schwarz suggests (pp. 251-252, "Herakles/Hercle" in LIMC) a conflation of the two myths, Herakles and the Cretan bull and Theseus and the Minotaur, rather than a lost local Etruscan legend. For a similar example by the same painter now in the Louvre see no. 329 in Schwarz, op. cit. For the painter's name vase, with similarly-depicted satyrs, now in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, see no. 136 in Martelli, et al., La Ceramica degli Etruschi, La pittura vascolare.

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