Hydria of the Shuvalov painter (Heidelberg B 133)
With a hydria by the Shuvalov painter , the Museum of Antiquities at the University of Heidelberg (inventory number B 133) has one of around 80 works attributed to the Shuvalov painter .
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The red-figure Hydria in Kalpis variant is largely black-ground. In addition to palmettes via double volutes at the base of the side handles, the painter only decorated the lip with an egg stick pattern. In the upper third of the abdomen he has drawn a two-figure image on the front side that extends over the shoulder of the vessel. The image field is delimited above and below by an egg stick pattern. On the left, a woman, turned to the right, sits on an armchair called Klismos . She wears a chiton and has wrapped herself in her coat. In her hands she holds a wreath that she looks at, whereby her gaze can be interpreted as attentive, deepened, pensive or even distant. A second figure, a young servant in a belted peplos, approaches her from the right . In her hands she carries a flat, ornate box. She too looks at her subject with a mixture of concentration and absence. The representation is well known from Attic grave reliefs from the classical period and can definitely be located in a sepulcral sphere. The picture shows a scene removed from the living, a sphere between life and death.
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The vessel was found in Capua and is therefore one of the many Attic pieces exported to southern Italy . Almost all of these vases were used as grave goods, which is why the representation is appropriate. With a height of 16.3 centimeters, the vessel, which was usually intended for fetching water, is also rather too small to be meaningfully used in this way. The miniature quality is underlined by the largest diameter of 11 centimeters and a diameter of the lip of 6.7 centimeters. Wilhelm Kraiker described the drawings by the Shuvalov painter as "quick, but neatly executed with skilful strokes". The assignment of the vase to the œuvre of the Shuvalov painter was based on stylistic comparisons, in particular the faces in the works of this painter are usually very significant. He left 12 of his more than 80 ascribed works on Hydrien. Kraiker dates the vessel to the Parthenon period , around 430 BC. BC, and combines it in the design with two hydria in the British Museum . Werner Technau added another hydria, which he dated ten years earlier. John D. Beazley recognized works by the Shuvalov painter in the first and third hydria in his work on identifying the painter's hands, but not in the second vase. Adrienne Lezzi-Hafter assigns the ornaments on the vase to a second painter's hand. The potter, who in addition to this oinochoe also made a large part of the other vessels that the Shuvalov painter decorated, she named after the painter S-Töpfer .
The vase has been completely preserved, the varnish shows isolated cracks. The body is made of very fine Attic clay, the coating of fine Attic black gloss.
literature
- Roland Hampe , Hildegund Gropengiesser : From the collection of the Archaeological Institute of Heidelberg University. (= Works of art in Heidelberg . Volume 2). Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1967, p. 62, plate 25.
- Wilhelm Kraiker : The red-figure Attic vases. (= Catalog of the collections of ancient cabaret of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Heidelberg. Volume 1). Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1978, ISBN 3-8053-0169-3 , pp. 52, 107-108, plates 35 and 36. (Reprint of the original edition from Verlag Heinrich Zeller, Berlin 1931)
