Material: clay, painted with clay slip

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There are two vases here for you to analyze:

• Images 1-5: "Dipylon Amphora" in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. 5 ft. 3 in. tall

• Images 6-7: Amphora from the Dipylon district of Athens, Cleveland Museum of Art. 2 ft. tall

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First, take a minute or two to look closely at the images above. Write down your reaction to these objects--what did you think about when you first saw them? What parts of these objects caught your eye? Why did you pick these objects for your response paper? Make notes on things that you notice about them. Also, write down any questions you have about them--what kinds of things would you want to know about these objects? Remember the questions we ask in class. You don't need to have answers for these questions yet, but keep them in your notes.

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Once you have some questions written down, try to answer them by reading the information I've provided below about these objects and their context.

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Context: Where Were They Found, And What Do We Know?

 

In ancient Athens, the Dipylon Gate was located in the northwestern part of the city. Outside the city walls, along the road, were a series of graves. This cemetery was in use for hundreds of years, but in the 8th century BCE the graves here were often supplied with vases painted in the "Geometric" style. These vases often would have stood next to the tomb (which would have been a large earth mound), with the foot of the vase buried in the ground. The vase itself had a hole in the bottom, and when family members came to pay their respects at the tomb, they would pour a liquid offering to the dead into the vase, which would flow down into the ground (toward the underworld). While there were other cemeteries in Athens, outside other gates, the cemetery outside the Dipylon gate was home to the wealthiest and most spectacular graves.

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These vases are made on a potter's wheel, in several parts (it is extremely difficult to shape a large vase on a potter's wheel!) which were then joined together and fired in a kiln. These vases were painted; unlike later Greek pottery (where the "paint" was a slip made of clay and water which was "baked" into the vase during the firing process) these vases were painted after firing. You can see how the paint has faded away, especially on the second vase.

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While these two vases have some similar imagery, one is much smaller than the other and the painting is also less fine. How do you explain these differences? What does this tell you about the people who were buried with each of the two vases?

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The shape of these vases is different than the Dipylon krater we looked at in class. The krater was a big open vessel for mixing wine and water at male-only parties. The vases above, though, are amphoras--a vase shape that tended to be used for storage of food or other goods in the household. Some scholars have suggested that amphoras were used to mark women's graves, perhaps because amphoras were used in the household to store food, and food preparation was women's responsibility. Does it change the meaning of the scenes on these vases, if they were marking the grave of a woman instead of a man?

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The second vase also has coils of clay applied to the body of the vase in a zig-zag pattern. Especially on the body of the vase, the pattern looks a bit like a snake to me. While in our modern world the snake often has negative connotations, in ancient Greece the snake had different meaning. Greeks observed that the snake shed its skin and was symbolically "reborn", and they also observed that snakes slithered down into the earth and then reemerged. Both of these characteristics linked snakes to death and the underworld in the Greek mind (the underworld was of course down in the earth)--but not in a bad way. Greeks hoped to be "reborn" into a happy afterlife, and snakes were seen as positive, protective figures as well as animals which could heal a person. Keep this in mind when considering why a potter might put a snake on a vase intended for a grave.

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Some things to consider in your response paper:​

• What was your response to these objects? What drew your eye? You are encouraged to use first person (I/me) in your response paper. I want to know what you think.

• Try to imagine the artists painting these vases; put yourself into his or her mind. What kinds of decisions did the artist make when they were creating these vases, and why did they make those choices? Think about size, body proportions and scale, and composition (in terms of where they placed human, animal, and inanimate designs). Use your art terminology.

• Consider the imagery on these vases, both human and animal. Why did these painters place these scenes on the vases? What were they trying to express about their society and how their society treats the dead?

• Consider also the two people who purchased or commissioned these vases. What does it say about them, that they chose vases with this kind of imagery on them? What would people visiting or walking by the grave think when they saw this imagery?

• Remember that these two vases are quite different in size and the sophistication of the painting. What does that tell you about the two people whose graves these vases once marked?