Hirschfeld crater
As Hirschfeld Crater is a monumental crater of Hirschfeld painter called. The Attic - geometrical work goes into the middle of the 8th century BC. And is now in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens .
The 1.23 meter high Hirschfeld crater, along with the Dipylon amphora, is one of the most famous and important works of geometric ceramics. Like the painter, it was named after the German archaeologist Gustav Hirschfeld , who first described the work in a letter to Alexander Conze in 1872 . The Hirschfeld painter was probably also the potter of the crater from which other vases of this type have survived. The crater was found in the ancient Athenian cemetery Kerameikos , near the Dipylon gate . It had been used there as a grave essay for a man's grave. The piece is dated between 750 and 735 BC. BC, most likely around the year 740 BC. BC, dated and thus belongs to the Late Geometric II phase . The crater is kept in the museum under inventory number 990, previously it probably had inventory number 2754.
The crater was found heavily fragmented and reassembled. Missing positions were added in a modern way. The body, foot and handle were manufactured separately and only connected to one another in the course of further manufacture, but before the fire. Double handles were attached to both sides of the body. The high quality pottery is complemented by equally high quality painting. Under a meander frieze on the neck is a wide band with the main frieze . This shows an ekphora , the laying out of the dead. He is lying on a cart drawn by two horses. Typically, all elements are shown individually, so the dead person is not lying under the shroud, elements that prevent the dead person from seeing are shown fully spread out over the carriage and the dead person is depicted over all these elements. In front of, behind and in a second row above the car - which is supposed to symbolize a larger crowd - mourners are shown. The silhouetted mourners with triangular torsos have raised their arms in mourning and indicate to pull the hair of the female figures with their hands. Such mourners were part of the Greek mourning ritual. In the heads of the figures, space has been left out for the eyes. Under the main frieze there is a second picture frieze showing horses pulling carts and warriors with shields on the carts. It may be a funeral race . This is followed by geometric motifs, especially lines and ribbons, but also another meander frieze on the foot and a saw pattern on the edge of the foot. The second row of the main frieze is decorated with large circular patterns, and various other geometric elements can also be found in the open spaces of the picture friezes. Overall, the painter was quite reluctant to decorate for geometrical proportions.
literature
- John Boardman : Early Greek Vase Painting. 11th to 6th Century BC. A Handbook , Thames and Hudson, London 1998 (World of Art), pp. 26-27 ISBN 0-500-20309-1
- Thomas Mannack : Greek vase painting. An introduction . Theiss, Stuttgart 2002, pp. 76-77 ISBN 3-8062-1743-2 .
Web links
- Attic late Geometric crater, so-called Hirschfeld crater in the Arachne archaeological database