Nessos amphora
The Nessos amphora , also known as the Nessos vase , is an early work of Attic black-figure vase painting . It is considered to be one of the central and most important works of Attic ceramics and the first individual, characteristic work of the style. The vase painter was given the emergency name Nessos painter after this vase .
The tall and comparatively slender neck amphora is of above-average size. It was reconstructed from many shards, and missing parts were added. The vase has an unusually light yellow color for Attic ceramics. The amphora shape is a new Attic development.
The painter shows the most important picture on the neck: Heracles pulls the centaur Nessus by the hair with his left hand, and kicks him in the back with his left leg. In his right hand he has the sword ready to strike and is about to kill Nessos. The centaur has an elongated, thin horse body, it holds its arms helplessly backwards, its legs are bent, its face is covered by a long, unkempt beard. Not so with Herakles, who wears a neat, trimmed beard. He wears a medium-length, short-sleeved robe in red color. His sword scabbard hangs over his left shoulder. The figures are identified by inscriptions: Heracles is marked in left-hand script (ΒΕΡΑΚΛΕΣ), Nessos by the right-hand inscription ΝΕΤΟΣ. John D. Beazley named the painter after her, but used the full Attic form of the name, nettos, instead of netos. In the meantime, the majority of the name form Nessos has established itself. The painter used the entire width and the entire height of the picture window for his neckline.
The image of the abdomen shows three grimacing, winged Gorgons running to the right in a knee-run pattern . The robes and parts of the faces are shown in red overlay. The dolphin frieze below is only preserved in fragments, but the frieze on the narrow shoulder of the vessel above, which separates the neck and body, is good. The painter has inserted an ornamental, vegetable braided ribbon here. On both sides of the neck there are filled, painted handles, each containing two small picture fields separated by a meander band . The top of the fields is occupied by an owl, the bottom by a swan. While most of the representations on the amphora are shown moved to the right - with the exception of the dolphin dance moving to the left - the animals in the handle pictures are oriented towards the neck: the owls look outwards, the swans towards the neck. Meanders also line the edge of the handle and frame the field of view of the neck on the left and right. A narrow ornament band in the form of a running dog conveys to the lip, which the Nessos painter decorated on the outside with a frieze-like row of around 30 swans. Over the free spaces of the entire vase, he distributed filling ornaments, mostly dab rosettes and zigzag lines.
The amphora served as a grave marker. It was found on Piraeus Street near the Dipylon Gate in the Kerameikos Cemetery in Athens . Today it is located in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens with inventory number 1002 . The vase is dated between 615 and 605 BC. Dated.
literature
- John Boardman : Early Greek Vase Painting. 11th to 6th Century BC. A Handbook , Thames and Hudson, London 1998 (World of Art), p. 16 ISBN 0-500-20309-1
- Thomas Mannack : Greek vase painting. An introduction . Theiss, Stuttgart 2002, p. 104 ISBN 3-8062-1743-2 .
Web links
- Attic black-figure amphora by the Nessus Painter in the Arachne archaeological database