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Greek Archaic black figure stamnos with a chariot race. Greek World, Late 6th Century B.C. This Attic black figure stamnos is nearly whole, having been reconstituted from a number of pieces with the few missing elements overpainted. The clay is pink on the inside, and red-orange outside, and there is a K graffi to on the foot. This stamnos was published in 1977 with a lid, which has since been lost.

The stamnos is a broad-shouldered, round-shaped vessel, with a low foot, a low neck and two up-turned handles that was produced from the late sixth into the late fifth century B.C. Some examples have lids, suggesting that they were used for storage, both for liquids and other foodstuffs. Our stamnos is of “Miniature Class A”, characterized by its squat body and short neck. The scheme of decoration is typical for this class: except for the two uninterrupted bands of decoration (one on the shoulder, one on the body), the vase is painted completely black, except for the reserved areas inside the handles and at the lower edge of the foot. The upper register of decoration is set off from the black neck by a red ring. The shoulder - and body - zones of decoration are separated by one black and two red bands that run around the vase just below the decoration on the body of the vessel.

The scene on the shoulder is of a feast. Six symposiasts, three men and three women, lounge on couches. The revelers are all fully clothed in himatia (cloaks). As is conventional in Greek vase painting, the faces and arms of the women are painted in added white. Wineskins hang from the wall between the revelers, and a black dog stands just above one of the handles.

The scene on the body is of a chariot race with three contesting quadrigae (chariots drawn by four horses) commanded by three charioteers, racing to the right. The charioteers are bearded and wear long chitons (tunics); they hold reins and whips in their hands. Beneath each of the stamnos'

handles is a turning post, around which the charioteer would have had to navigate his horses during the course of the race. On one side of the stamnos, there is one quadriga running alone; below, a dog in added white with a black collar runs, his pose, forepaws off the ground, echoes that of the horses above. On the other side, one quadriga pursues another. As is common with the depictions of quadrigae on black figure pottery, the horses here have been abbreviated, with only one of the horses' bodies and two or three of the horses' heads visible; the number of horses associated with each chariot can only be ascertained by counting the number of hooves below.

Both scenes of racing and feasting are common on black fi gure pottery and are sometimes combined, as we see here. Associated with major celebrations, held to commemorate gods and men, both were events that heralded a departure from normal day-to-day life. It is appropriate, then, that the owners of this vessel would have used it in their own celebrations, its decoration a reminder of grand scale festivities and special occasions.

Barbara Philippaki attributed this stamnos to the Michigan painter, the most prolifi c painter of Miniature Type A stamnoi. His favorite subjects are those seen here (athletics and banquets) as well as scenes of komos (drunken dance), and the occasional mythological subject. The Michigan

painter is very close to another Attic vase painter of the same period, the Beaune Painter. These two painters make up Beazley's Perizoma Group, so named because of the perizoma (or loin cloths) worn by some athletes and revelers on their vases. It has been postulated that, because of similarities between certain elements of their vases and Etruscan iconography (the aforementioned white loin cloths and fully-clothed, reclining women revelers, visible on our stamnos), the Perizoma Group produced vases expressly for export to that region.

A stamnos very close to our own, also painted by the Michigan Painter, is in Würzburg. Like our vase, the Würzburg stamnos is decorated with two uninterrupted bands, the shoulder depicting a feast, the body, a race of quadrigae. The Würzburg example differs from ours only in minutiae: rather than three men and three women revelers in the upper register, the Würzburg vase has two women and four men, and the black dog is absent. In the lower register, the only difference between our stamnos the one in Würzburg is that the dog is black, rather than white. Another stamnos of this same type in Oxford, attributed to the Michigan painter, shows a similar feasting scene in the upper register, but differs in that it shows a footrace, rather than a chariot race, below.

In Seattle, there is very well preserved stamnos by the Michigan painter, which shares its general scheme of decoration with our vase and the one in Würzburg (a symposium on the shoulder, a race of quadrigae below). The Seattle stamnos differs, however, in that its decoration does not appear in uninterrupted bands, but in panels on either side of the vessel.

Price: USD 110,000