Lot Essay
Each side features a single figure isolated against the black ground in the manner perfected by the Berlin Painter and adopted by his pupils, including the Tithonos Painter, to whom this amphora is attributed. On one side a warrior stands with his right arm outstretched, holding a phiale. With his left hand he holds a spear, a circular shield with a lion as the blazon and an apron adorned with an eye and a brow. He is equipped with a crested helmet and wears a cuirass over a chitoniskos. On the other side, a female attendant (perhaps the warrior’s sister, wife or beloved), is enveloped in a himation and similarly holds a phiale in her outstretched hand and an oinochoe in the other. A band of meander is below each figure.
This vase is nearly identical to another also attributed to the Tithonos Painter, now in the Princeton University Art Museum (Inv. no. 1991-77; see “Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1991,” Record of the Art Museum Princeton University, vol. 51, no. 1, 1992, p. 71). For a discussion of departure scenes involving sacrificial libations, see pp. 230-231 in J.M. Padgett, ed., The Berlin Painter and His World: Athenian Vase-Painting in the Early Fifth Century B.C.).
This vase is nearly identical to another also attributed to the Tithonos Painter, now in the Princeton University Art Museum (Inv. no. 1991-77; see “Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1991,” Record of the Art Museum Princeton University, vol. 51, no. 1, 1992, p. 71). For a discussion of departure scenes involving sacrificial libations, see pp. 230-231 in J.M. Padgett, ed., The Berlin Painter and His World: Athenian Vase-Painting in the Early Fifth Century B.C.).