The Birth of An Image. The Paintin PDF

The birth of an image
The painting of a statue of Herakles and theories of

representation in ancient Greek culture
CLEMENTE MARCONI
One of the most fascinating aspects of ancient Greek

art is its continuous drive towards self-reference and
quotation. From the Archaic to the Hellenistic period,
vases are often depicted in vase paintings, statues on
sculptures, vases on sculptures, and statues in vase
paintings. This tendency towards self-reference and
quotation has been the focus of increasing attention
in recent years. The phenomenon of mise en abyme
in vase painting has been discussed, among others,
by Franois Lissarrague and Jenifer Neils, while the
representation of statues in vase paintings is the subject
of two monographs published in the same year, one by
Werner Oenbrink and the other by Monica De Cesare.1
We are still far, however, from a general interpretation
of this aspect of Greek visual culture. This is in strident
contrast with the field of Greek literature, where the selfreferentiality of comedy and satyr-plays, and its tendency
towards meta-theatricality and quotation have long been
subject to investigation.2
The content of this essay has been presented in a series of public
lectures given between 2006 and 2007 at various institutions, including
the Institute of Fine ArtsNYU, Rutgers University, Johns Hopkins
University, and Yale University.
1. Vases in vase paintings: H. Gericke, Gefssdarstellungen auf
griechischen Vasen (Berlin: Hessling, 1970); W. Oenbrink, Ein Bild
im Bild-Phnomen. Zur Darstellung figrlich dekorierter Vasen auf
bemalten attischen Tongefssen, Hephaistos 14 (1996):81134; F.
Lissarrague, Greek Vases. The Athenians and their Images, trans. K.
Allen (New York: Riverside, 2001), p. 30; J. Neils, Vases on Vases,
in Greek Vase Painting: Form, Figure, and Narrative, ed. P. G. Warden
(Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2004), pp. 2834.
Statues on vases: K. Schefold, Statuen auf Vansebildern, Jahrbuch
des Deutschen Archologischen Instituts 52 (1937):3075; B. Alroth,
Changing Modes in the Representation of the Cult Images, in The
Iconography of Greek Cult in the Archaic and Classical Periods, ed.
R. Hgg (Athnes and Lige: Centre dEtude de la Religion Grecque
Antique, 1992), pp. 945; M. De Cesare, Le statue in immagine (Rome:
LErma di Bretschneider, 1997); W. Oenbrink, Das Bild im Bilde. Zur
Darstellung von Gtterstatuen und Kultbildern auf griechischen Vasen
(Frankfurt and New York: P. Lang, 1997).
2. See, for example, M. Kaimio et al., Metatheatricality in the
Greek Satyr-play, Arctos 35 (2001):3578.
My hope is that in the future this aspect of Greek

visual culture will receive the attention it deserves. Selfreferences in Greek art, however humorous they can
sometimes be, are always significant statements made
by the artists about the nature, intention, and function of
their own craft. In addition, quotations between artistic
genres illuminate the response and reception of works
of art at a time close to their production.3 Our discourse
on Greek art would greatly benefit from both, even more
since this discourse is still consistently based on the art
criticism of the Roman period and on the testimony of
authors centuries away from the works of art to which
they refer. These authors, such as Pliny the Elder and
the Philostrati, provide essential evidence for the later
reception of Greek art. But their status as documents
for the response and reception of Greek art at the time
of its production and for the ideas of its producers
is questionable. We should try to take advantage
of the hermeneutic potential of self-reference and
intertextuality in Greek art to rethink its history: That is to
say, to investigate the reception and response to Greek
art and the ideas of its producers through Greek art.
In this essay I would like to focus on one of the
masterpieces of the art of self-reference and quotation in
Greek visual culture: the Apulian column krater at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, which shows an encaustic
painter working on a statue of Herakles in the presence
of the hero-god himself (figs. 12).4 Dating to the second
quarter of the fourth century, this krater features a unique
scene within the context of South Italian vases, where
3. For current discussions of the viewer in scholarship on ancient

art see esp. the work of Jas Elsner (for example, J. Elsner, Roman Eyes
[Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007]); and Paul Zanker (for
example, P. Zanker, Bild-Rume und Betrachter im kaiserzeitlichen
Rom, in Klassische Archologie: Eine Einfhrung, eds. A. H. Borbein,
T. Hlscher, and P. Zanker [Berlin: Reimer, 2000], pp. 205226).
4. New York, MMA 50.11.4: The krater, acquired by the
Metropolitan Museum in May 1950, was first published by Dietrich
von Bothmer in 1951.
146 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011
Figure 1. Apulian red-figure column krater. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1950 (50.11.4). Image The Metropolitan
Museum of Art. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Marconi: The birth of an image 147
Figure 2. Alternate view of figure 1.
representation of crafts are rare.5 Even more unique,

however, is the coexistence in the vase painting of
representation and represented, the latter watching
closely the finishing process of his own image.
I will start my analysis of the scene with the statue
of Herakles (fig. 2). The statue, slightly larger than life
size, represents a youthful Herakles with relatively long
5. The vase was dated by von Bothmer to the early fourth century
and linked to the work of the Ariadne Painter, a late contemporary
and follower of the Sisyphus Painter, belonging to the Early Apulian
phase. Two years later, G. M. A. Richter in The Metropolitan Museum
of Art. Handbook of the Greek Collection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1953), p. 117, attributed the krater to the very hands
of the Ariadne Painter. In 1961, Cambitoglou and Trendall listed the
vase in connection with the Painter of Boston 00.348, a somewhat
inferior contemporary of the Ariadne Painter, belonging to the Ariadne
Group (A. Cambitoglou and A. D. Trendall. Apulian Red-Figured VasePainters of the Plain Style [n.p.: Archaeological Institute of America,
1961], p. 19, no. i). In 1969, the two scholars determined the author
of our krater to be much nearer to the Judgment Painter and to the
Berkeley Painter, and thus working in the period just before the middle
of the fourth century (A. Cambitoglou and A. D. Trendall, Addenda
to Apulian Red-Figure Vase-Painters of the Plain Style, American
b.c.
Journal of Archaeology 73 [1969]:423433; p. 425). In keeping

with that conclusion, in 1978 Cambitoglou and Trendall dated the
krater to the Middle Apulian phase, noticing its stylistic association
with some of the later vases of the Ariadne Painter, and also with the
Painter of Boston 00.348 (A. D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, The
Red-figured Vases of Apulia, 3 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press; New
York: Oxford University Press, 19781982], vol. I, pp. 266f., num.
47; A. D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, Second Supplement to the
Red-figured Vases of Apulia [London: Institute of Classical Studies,
1991], p. 61). Finally, in 1989, Trendall situated the krater in close
association with the Judgment Painter, one of the main representatives
of the next generation of Plain style painters coming after the
Tarporley Painter and his immediate successors, and active in the
years between 380 and 360 b.c. (A. D. Trendall, Red Figure Vases of
South Italy and Sicily [London: Thames & Hudson, 1989], p. 78). This
remains the most plausible dating of the vase. The krater is dated to
380370 by Schneider-Herrmann (G. Schneider-Herrmann, Kultstatue
im Tempel auf italischen Vasenbildern, Bulletin Antieke Beschaving
47 [1972]:3142, p. 40); to 375350 by Stenico and De Cesare (A.
Stenico, Statua, Pittore della, Enciclopedia dellarte antica, classica e
orientale VII [1966]):484; M. De Cesare, Una statua di Eracle tra mito
ed escatologia: per una lettura unitaria del cratere apulo di New York
MMA 50.11.4, RendLinc s. 9, 5 [1994]:247258, p. 248; De Cesare
1997 [see note 1], p. 254 no. 177); to 360350 by Palagia (O. Palagia,
C. Classical Greek/Roman, in Herakles, ed. J. Boardman Lexicon
Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae IV [1988]:738790, p. 745, no.
hair and no beard, standing with his weight on the right

leg and with the left leg free and slightly advanced to
the side. The head is turned to the left, in the direction
of the free leg, while the rest of the body is almost
frontal. Herakles is holding a bow terminating in birds
heads with the left hand, and clasping the club in the
outstretched right hand. The figure is nude, except
for the lion skin covering his left arm and shoulder.
The sculpture is set on a tall base, rising on two steps
and crowned by a molding bearing a pattern, while a
separate basea curious solutionsupports the club.
The statue of Herakles is painted in white, except
for the lion skin and the bow. Some details, such as
the hair and elements of the anatomy, are added in
diluted yellow. The fact that the base is not painted in
white implies that the statue and its support are not
made of the same material. Von Bothmer first suggested
that the material of the statue is marble, based on the
bright white color that covers most of the surface of
the sculpture, and on the fact that this is being painted
in the encaustic technique.6 Further support for this
suggestion comes from the fact that the white and diluted
yellow used on the statue are quite different from the
uniform, dark yellow used for the brazier, the phiale, the
bowl with the color, and the finial of Zeuss scepter, all
meant to be of bronze. This last observation is critical
for establishing that the statue is of marble, as generally
assumed in the literature.7 The alternative identification
of the material with bronze must be rejected.8
271); to ca. 350 by Schefold, Jung, Oenbrink, Berns, and Brinkmann
(K. Schefold and F. Jung, Die Urknige, Perseus, Bellerophon, Herakles
und Theseus in der klassischen und hellenistischen Kunst [Mnchen:
Hirmer. 1988], p. 228; Oenbrink 1997 [see note 1], p. 390, no. G3;
C. Berns, Bilder vom Rand der Welt, in Die griechische Klassik: Idee
oder Wirklichkeit, ed. W.-D. Heilmeyer. Exh. cat. [Mainz: von Zabern;
Berlin: Antikensammlung Berlin, 2002], pp. 105110; p. 107, no. 13;
V. Brinkmann, Die Polychromie der archaischen und frhklassischen
Skulptur [Mnchen: Biering & Brinkmann, 2003], p. 25, note 105).
6. D. von Bothmer, Enkaustes Agalmaton. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art Bulletin 9 (1951):156161, p. 156.
7. Richter (see note 5), p. 116; Schneider-Herrmann (see note 5),
p. 40; M. Schmidt, Some Remarks on the Subjects of South Italian
Vases, in The Art of South Italy: Vases from Magna Graecia, ed. M. E.
Mayo and K. Hamma, Exh. cat. (Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine
Arts, 1982), pp. 2336, p. 35; Palagia (see note 5), p. 745 no. 271;
Schefold and Jung (see note 5), p. 228; L. Todisco, Eracle, la statua,
lartefice sul cratere apulo di New York MMA 50.11.4, Mlanges de
lcole franaise de Rome, Antiquit 102 (1990):901957, p. 925; De
Cesare 1994 (see note 5), p. 249; De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p. 103;
Oenbrink 1997 (see note 1), p. 151; Berns (see note 5), p. 107, no. 13.
8. P. Reuterswrd, Studien zur Polychromie der Plastik (Stockholm:
Bokfrlaget Svenska, 1980), p. 97, note 215; P. Moreno, Lisippo
(Bari: Dedalo, 1974), p. 7; P. Moreno, Limmagine delluomo nella
Figure 3. Herakles. Silver stater of Herakleia in Lucania. From

Williams Lehmann, Statues on Coins of Southern Italy and
Sicily in the Classical Period (New York: Bittner, 1946), pl. 12.1.
In his publication of the krater, von Bothmer took the

differences between the statue of Herakles and the living
Herakles as evidence of the fact that the vase painter was
inspired by a real work of art.9 In his search for this lost
original, von Bothmer pointed to the fourth-century silver
staters of Herakleia in Lucania, featuring on the two sides
Herakles and the head of Athena (fig. 3).10 The standing
Herakles on the reverse appears very similar to the statue
on our vase, in both the stance and the attributes of the
hero-god.
A few years before the publication of our vase by von
Bothmer, Phyllis Williams Lehmann had analyzed the
representation of Herakles on the coins of Herakleia. By
scultura e nella pittura: il divino, leroico, il quotidiano, in Civilt del
Mezzogiorno, ed. S. Moscati (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 1984), pp.
84127, p. 93; Trendall (see note 5), p. 266.
9. Von Bothmer (see note 6), p. 158.
10. Ph. Williams Lehmann, Statues on Coins of Southern Italy and
Sicily in the Classical Period (New York: Bittner, 1946), p. 53; Palagia
(see note 5), p. 745, no. 281; Todisco (see note 7), pp. 945ff.; F. D.
Van Keuren, The Coinage of Heraclea Lucaniae (Rome: Bretschneider,
1994), pp. 31ff., 73ff. (Group E, stater types 7986); S. Kansteiner,
Herakles: die Darstellungen in der Grossplastik der Antike (Kln:
Bhlau, 2000), 132 no. Pi 15.
associating this representation with a series of statues,

which she dated to the fourth century, Williams Lehmann
suggested that the coins of Herakleia featured a bronze
statue set up in this South Italian city. In Lehmanns view,
this statue served as the archetype for a sculptural type of
Herakles documented by Roman copies and known as
Albertini/Pitti Herakles (fig. 4).11 Building on Lehmanns
ideas, von Bothmer suggested that the statue on our vase
could perhaps be another illustration of that lost original,
in which case, that original would have been made of
marble, not of bronze, and its date should be pushed
back to the first half of the fourth century.12
In more recent years, Olga Palagia further developed
the suggestions by Lehmann and von Bothmer. Following
the association of the statue on our vase with the
Albertini/Pitti Herakles type, Palagia suggested that the
sculptural prototype of the Albertini/Pitti Herakles was
created around 385 b.c., and that it was most probably
set up in South Italy, based on our krater and the staters
from Herakleia. In addition, according to Palagia, a
series of reliefs from Athens would indicate the existence
of an early variant of the same type in Attica.13
Palagias suggestions were the basis for the attempt
by Luigi Todisco to reconstruct the historical context of
both the original sculpture and the scene on our krater.
Following the association of the Herakles on the staters
with the statue of the hero-god on our krater, taken as
illustrations of the same original, Todisco suggested that
this statue was created around 379 b.c., when Tarentum
took the leadership of the Italiote League, moving its
headquarters to Herakleia. On this occasion, a new
statue of Herakles would have been dedicated in this
city, under the initiative of Tarentum, celebrating its new
leadership of the Italiote League.14
Todiscos suggestion is problematic and difficult to
maintain. The first problem concerns the material of the
statue(s). While the statue of Herakles on our krater is of
marble, the original this painted statue is supposed to
reproduce, according to Todisco, was made of bronze,
11. Williams Lehmann (ibid.), pp. 53ff. On the Herakles Albertini/
Pitti see Palagia (see note 5), pp. 745f.; A. Linfert, Die Schule des
Polyklet, in Polyklet. Der Bildhauer der griechischen Klassik, exh. cat.,
Frankfurt am Main, Liebieghaus, Museum alter Plastik (Mainz: von
Zabern, 1990), pp. 240297, esp. pp. 281f.; Kansteiner (ibid.), pp. 46
ff., 129ff.
12. Von Bothmer (see note 6), pp. 159f.; see also Moreno 1984 (see
note 8), p. 94.
13. Palagia (see note 5), pp. 745f., 792.
14. Todisco (see note 7), pp. 943ff. Todisco is followed by De
Cesare 1994 (see note 5), p. 254, note 30, and De Cesare 1997 (see
note 1), p. 103, note 105.
Figure 4. Replica of the Albertini/Pitti Herakles type. Rome,

Museo Nazionale Romano 29. Photo by the author.
as suggested by the struts on the Roman replicas of the

Albertini/Pitti Herakles type. There are also differences
between the figure of Herakles on our vase and on the
coins of Herakleia that should not be ignored. One
concerns some of the attributes: the Herakles on the
vase is missing his baldric and quiver, and his left hand
is not holding an arrow together with the bow, but only
the bow. This difference may not be particularly relevant,
given that baldric, quiver, and arrow are not featured
on the earliest coins of Herakleia. A second difference,
however, constitutes a more serious problem. The left

arm of the statue on our vase, rather than being moved
emphatically to the side, as seen on the coins, is kept
in front of the body, with some consequence on the
arrangement of the lion skin. This second difference runs
against the idea that our vase painting and the coins
of Herakleia would illustrate the same lost original, a
possibility that has been more recently discounted by
Sascha Kansteiner within the context of a new systematic
discussion of the Albertini/Pitti Herakles type.15
Chronology also speaks against Todiscos suggestion.
The staters of Herakleia have been generally dated to
shortly after the middle of the fourth century b.c. More
recently, van Keuren has further lowered this date, by
linking the issuing of these coins with the intervention of
Alexander the Molossian in the war between Tarentum
and the Lucanians in 334 b.c. Be that as it may, our vase
dates to about 380360 b.c. and depicts a marble statue
of Herakles, while the coins of Herakleia, issued some
ten to thirty years later, if showing the archetype of the
Albertini/Pitti Herakles, would feature a similar statue,
but made of bronze. The safest conclusion to be drawn
from all of this would be that our krater alludes to some
sculptural type of Herakles that served as the model for
the statue set up in Herakleia a few decades later.
Von Bothmer, in first publishing the krater,
immediately recognized that our scene concerns the
painting of the statue of Herakles in encaustic technique
(figs. 5, 6).16 The application of encaustic paint was
a two-step process. In the first step, the pigment was
mixed with wax, which had been previously purified and
bleached. The resulting paste was applied with a special
tool that Pliny17 calls cestrum, a kind of spatula. In the
second step, the paste applied to the statue was melted,
with the artist going over it with a red-hot iron rod. This
procedure, which was essential for making the wax
color look even, was particularly difficult and required
considerable skill, which is the reason why its technical
name gave the name to the whole process, and why
artists painting in encaustic technique did not sign their
15. Kansteiner (see note 10), p. 47, note 336.
16. On encaustic painting see, more recently, N. J. Koch, Techne
und Erfindung in der klassischen Malerei (Mnchen: Biering und
Brinkmann, 2000), pp. 41ff.; V. Brinkmann, Colors and Painting
Techniques, in Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity,
ed. S. Ebbinghaus. Exh. cat., Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard
University Art Museums (Munich: Stiftung Archologie Glyptothek,
2007):210215; p. 213; I. Kakoulli, Greek Painting Techniques and
Materials from the Fourth to the First Century b.c. (London: Archetype,
2009), pp. 11f., 35f.
17.Pliny, Naturalis Historia 3.149.
Figure 5. Close-up of figure 2.
works with the expression so-and-so painted it, but

rather with the expression so-and-so burned it in.
While featuring the first step of encaustic painting, our
scene also alludes to the next stage. The painter bends
towards the statue and applies the paste with a spatula
held in the right hand, while the left hand holds a small
bowl with the color (a box behind the painter probably
serves as a container for the different wax paints). The
application of the paste concerns the mane of the lions
skin hanging from Herakles left arm, whose basic
drawing has already been executed. While the painter is
still engaged in the first step of the encaustic process, an
assistant to his left prepares the tools for the next stage,
by placing rods in a charcoal metal brazier. These rods
will soon be ready for the full encaustic process.18
18. It is hard to tell how much of our statue of Herakles has already
been painted, and in what colors. According to von Bothmer, since the
artist is working at the mane of Herakles lion skin, and since the lion
skin is differentiated from the rest of the statue by not being white, one
may perhaps deduce that the lion skin . . . has already been painted
and that the color now in the paint pot is a darker hue, intended for
the mane (von Bothmer [see note 6], p. 158). The question remains,
however, as to whether our statue was meant to display a full or only
partial polychromy. This question has been answered in two opposite
The painter in our scene is portrayed as a mature man

with a long beard, wearing a felt cap and a loincloth,
two attributes which are characteristic of craftsmen.
Von Bothmer was the first to identify our figure with
a statue painter, and his interpretation has generally
been followed by later literature.19 There is, however, an
ways, which are reflective of two different ways of understanding the

role of polychromy in ancient Greek sculpture. Some, in fact, have
thought that the painter is working only at smaller details of the statue,
namely parts of the lion skin (Schmidt [see note 7], p. 35; De Cesare
1994 [see note 5], p. 249 and note 8; De Cesare 1997 [see note 1],
p. 103 and note 104), while others have suggested that the statue is,
or will be, fully painted. Among the proponents of this second idea,
Brinkmann has suggested that the white applied to our statue would
allude to the brilliance of the full polychromy of the sculpture (see
Brinkmann [note 5], p. 25): however, as noted above, the white refers
more likely to the material of our statue, marble.
19. Von Bothmer (ibid.), p. 156. See also Richter (see note 5),
p. 116; Cambitoglou and Trendall 1961 (see note 5), 19; M. Borda,
Ceramiche apule (Bergamo: Istituto italiano darti grafiche, 1966), p.
40; K. Hamma in The Art of South Italy: Vases from Magna Graecia,
(see note 7), p. 96; Schmidt [see note 7], p. 35; M. Robertson, A
History of Greek Art (London: Cambridge University Press), p. 485;
De Cesare 1994 (ibid.), p. 249; De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p. 103;
Oenbrink 1997 (see note 1), p. 389, no. G3; Berns (see note 5), p. 107,
no. 13; Brinkmann (see note 5), p. 25.
alternative identification with a sculptor, first suggested

by Cagiano de Azevedo.20 This proposition is difficult to
accept, given that carving tools are not featured in the
painting. Still, this alternative identification has exerted
some influence. A case in point is Todisco, who hints at
the possibility that our craftsman would be both painter
and sculptor.21 Along similar lines, Schefold and Jung
have identified our painter with Hephaistos, suggesting
that the god is putting his last touches on a marble statue
of Herakles set up in the Olympus on the occasion of the
apotheosis of this hero.22 This last proposal is inspired
by images of Hephaistos at work in which the dress
and posture of the god are similar to those of our statue
painter.23 To these representations one may add images of
the god wearing a headgear similar to the felt cap worn
by our figure.24 However, as convincingly argued by
Todisco, the proposal by Schefold and Jung does not take
into account the fact that representations of Hephaistos
are inspired by representations of artisans. Contradicting
the identification of our craftsman with Hephaistos is
also the fact that the god is never represented working
at marble statues or paintingunderstandably so, since
his expertise lies in metalworknor being assisted by a
slave boy with realistic features like the one on our vase,
but, rather, by satyrs.25
This leads us to the figure to the left: an African
boy with tightly curled hair and a flattish nose, who
is taking care of the heating apparatus by bending
forward and holding a rod with the right hand. Von
Bothmer has defined this figure as both assistant and
20. M. Cagiano De Azevedo, Bollettino dellIstituto centrale

del restauro, 56 (1951):107. See also F. Chamoux, LHracls
dAnticythre, Revue Archologique (1968):161170; p. 169;
Moreno 1974 (see note 8), p. 7; B. B. Shefton, The Krater from Basky,
in The Eye of Greece: Studies in the Art of Athens, ed. D. Kurtz and B.
Sparkes (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982),
pp. 149181, p. 175, note 104; Moreno 1984 (see note 8), p. 93.
21. Todisco (see note 7), p. 930.
22. Schefold and Jung (see note 5), p. 228.
23. Cp. e.g. the neck amphora (480) Boston, MFA 13.188:
ARV 2 306, no. 2 (Dutuit P.); Para 357; Add 105; A. Hermary and A.
Jacquemin, Hephaistos, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae
Classicae IV (1988):627654, p. 631, no. 4. On the iconography
of Hephaistos, see in general F. Brommer, Hephaistos (Mainz: von
Zabern, 1978); Hermary and Jacquemin (ibid.).
24. Cp. e.g. the terracotta bust from Herakleia (ca. 300) in Policoro,
Museo Nazionale della Siritide: Brommer (ibid.), p. 216, no. 5; S.
Bianco and M. Tagliente. Il Museo Nazionale della Siritide di Policoro
(Roma: Laterza, 1985), p. 85; Hermary and Jacquemin (ibid.), p. 637
num. 101.
25. Todisco (see note 7), p. 931f. For a detailed list of the works
attributed to Hephaistos see Brommer (ibid.), pp. 138ff.
apprentice.26 However, as first pointed out by Robertson,

his status is rather that of a slave boy.27 More recently,
Todisco has noted that slave boys are not uncommon in
representations of workshops in Archaic and Classical art
and persuasively suggested that the presence of the slave
boy in our scene would be an indication of the high
status of the statue painter.28
The painting of the statue of Herakles is taking place
in a sanctuary, as indicated by two elements close to
the left limit of the field. One is a tall, unfluted column,
resting on a square base and crowned by an Ionic
capital. The other is a phiale, hanging on the background
to the right of the capital.
Isolated columns are often depicted on South Italian
vases. They generally serve as supports for statues,
tripods, or other kinds of votive offerings. There are
instances, however, in which isolated columns do not
serve as supports, nothing being shown above their
capital. In these instances, isolated columns seem to
function as visual abbreviations for buildings, as is often
the case on Athenian vases.29 This synecdochical use of
columns is particularly suitable for small vases, which
do not allow sufficient space for the display of entire
buildings, but it is also seen on larger vases. In some
instances, it is evident that isolated columns belong to
a sacred setting, but this is not always so. What makes
our column an allusion to a sacred space, however, is its
combination with a phiale.
Libation bowls hanging on the background are
often featured on South Italian vases and in a variety
of contexts: hanging behind statues inside naiskoi
in scenes of the cult of the dead;30 hanging together
with other paraphernalia in symposium scenes and
in representations of Dionsysos and his retinue;31 or
26. Von Bothmer (see note 6), p. 156; see also K. Hamma in Mayo
and Hamma (see note 19), p. 96; Moreno 1984 (see note 8), p. 93; De
Cesare 1994 (see note 5), p. 250; De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p. 103.
27. Robertson (see note 19), p. 485; see also Schefold and Jung (see
note 5), p. 228.
28. Todisco (see note 7), pp. 933ff. On slave boys cp. N.
Himmelmann, Archologisches zum Problem der griechischen
Sklaverei (Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur;
Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1971), pp. 21ff.; for depictions of workshops, see
M. Vidale, Lidea di un lavoro lieve (Padova: Imprimitur, 2002).
29. Cp. more recently B. Brandes-Druba, Architekturdarstellungen
in der unteritalischen Keramik (Frankfurt and New York: Lang, 1994),
pp. 113ff.
30. Cp. volute krater, British Museum F 283: Trendall and
Cambitoglou 19781982 (see note 5), vol. I, p. 193, no. 7 (Iliupersis P.).
31. Cp. calyx krater, New York, MMA L.63.21.6: Trendall and
Cambitoglou (ibid.), p. 212, no. 152 (P. of Athens 1714).
hanging between the gods watching mortals from

the Olympus.32 Relevant to our case, however, is the
frequent association of libation bowls with bucrania and
altars.33 Both associations are a clear indication of the
sacredness of the setting: either an open-air sanctuary or
a temple.
Since the publication by von Bothmer, these last two
possibilities have both been considered in the
interpretation of the setting of our scene, which has
consequently been interpreted as taking place outdoors
in a temenos, or indoors and within a shrine.34 This
second possibility, favored in recent years, is far from
certain. Of course, in South Italian vase painting isolated
columns and hanging bowls can serve as indications of
an indoor setting. However, on Apulian vases there are
also several outdoor scenes that come close to our
image. One may mention a pelike in Taranto (370360 b.c.)
showing Dionysos with phiale and thyrsus seated on an
altar between two women.35 This scene is taking place in
the open air, and to the left one sees an Ionic column
similar to the one featured on our krater.
The painting of our statue of Herakles, then, is
taking place in a sanctuary, and possibly outdoors.
Other proposals concerning the identification of the
setting cannot be maintained. This is true of arguments
locating the scene in the artists workshop,36 but also
of those placing it on the Olympus.37 That our vase
32. Cp. calyx krater, Berlin F 3297: Trendall and Cambitoglou

(ibid.), p. 423 no. 49 (Berlin Ganymede Group).
33. Bucrania: cp. bell krater, Berne, private collection: Trendall
and Cambitoglou (ibid.), p. 246 num. 165 (Schlaepfer P.). Altars: cp.
oinochoe, Florence, private collection: Trendall and Cambitoglou
(ibid.), p. 427, no. 68 (Group of B.M. F 308).
34. Temenos: Borda (see note 19), pp. 107ff.; K. Hamma in Mayo
and Hamma (see note 19), p. 96; Oenbrink 1997 (see note 1), p. 150;
Berns (see note 5), p. 107, no. 13. Shrine: von Bothmer (see note 6), p.
156; Todisco (see note 7), pp. 925ff.; De Cesare 1994 (see note 5), p.
250; De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p. 103, note 107; pp. 104, 175. Cp.
also Berns (ibid.).
35. Taranto 117503: Trendall and Cambitoglou 19781982 (see
note 5), vol. I, p. 262, no. 18 (Judgment P.).
36. Cagiano de Azevedo 1951, 107; Moreno 1974 (see note 8), p.
7; Chamoux (see note 20), pp. 168ff.; Schmidt (see note 7), p. 35.
37. Schefold and Jung (see note 5), p. 228; De Cesare 1994 (see
note 5), pp. 250ff.; De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p. 105 and note 108,
p. 175f. De Cesare has suggested a thematic link between the two
sides of our vase. On the other side, our krater features Athena seated
in the center in conversation with one of the Dioskouroi, identified
by his dress and the star near his head. On the upper left, Hermes is
turning away from his son Pan to take part in the conversation. Below,
Eros is chasing a goose without being involved in the conversation.
The scene is difficult to interpret. For von Bothmer, the Dioskouros is
either ready to leave or reporting from a journey (von Bothmer [see
cannot represent the finishing of the statue of Herakles

on the Olympus consequent to the heros apotheosis is
indicated by the identity of the artisan, a mortal, rather
than the god Hephaistos.
Framing the statue from above are the figures of Zeus
and Nike, on the upper register (figs. 7, 8). Zeus wears
the himation and a crown of leaves, and holds a long
scepter. The wings of Nike are wide spread, but the
goddesswearing a peplosis not moving, and has
both hands at rest. Both gods are seated with their bodies
towards the sides, while turning their heads towards the
center, and looking at the head of the statue of Herakles.
As pointed out by von Bothmer and Todisco, the contrast
between the position of the body and the turn of the
head indicates the fact that the statue has caught the
attention of the gods, transforming them into onlookers.38
Thus far, the presence of Zeus and Nike has been
explained by referring to the representations of
assemblies of divinities often featured in the upper
register of Apulian vases.39 These assemblies of divinities
are meant to take place on the Olympus, from where
the gods assist the events unfolding in the lower register.
Accordingly, the Zeus and Nike on our vase have been
regarded as looking at the painting of the statue from
some distance.40 It may be added, however, that statues
of Herakles were commonly dedicated in sanctuaries of
Zeus. Several are mentioned by Pausanias at Olympia,
like the Herakles made by Onatas for the Thasians: a
large bronze statue representing the hero-god holding a
club and a bow.41 We cannot thus exclude that the scene
on our vase is taking place in a sanctuary of Zeus.
Nike has her body turned towards the living Herakles
and her head turned to the statue, and, in addition,
she is positioned between the two of them. This is
reminiscent of several representations of Nike crowning
Herakles on South Italian and Sicilian red-figure vases,
note 6], p. 160). Hamma has suggested that the scene may represent
Polydeukes talking to Athena and Hermes after the death of Kastor at
the hands of the sons of Aphareus (K. Hamma in Mayo and Hamma
[note 19, p. 99], followed by Schefold and Jung [ibid.], p. 32). De
Cesare has suggested that the obverse of our vase would represent the
apotheosis of Herakles on the Olympus, and the reverse the scene of
Iolaos or a Dioskouros informing Athena about the establishment of a
cult of Herakles in one of her sanctuaries. This last suggestion is very
intriguing, also in consideration of the potential funerary destination of
our krater. However, a thematic link between the two sides of our vase
is not readily apparent.
38. Von Bothmer (see note 6), p. 156; Todisco (see note 7), pp. 928ff.
39. See in general Trendall (note 5), pp. 255f.
40. Von Bothmer (see note 6), p. 156; Todisco (note 7), pp. 928ff.
41. Pausanias 5.25.1213.
an iconography that was rather popular, and not limited

to vase painting.42 One may consider the staters of
Herakleia, in which Nike is often depicted holding a
wreath for Herakles. With this iconography in mind,
one wonders whether on our vase the goddess is not
distracting her view from the real Herakles and looking
at the statue of the hero. If this interpretation were
correct, Nike would be anticipating the reaction of the
living Herakles to his own portrait.
The living Herakles is located at the right end of
the field, to the right of Nike (fig. 9). He has the same
attributes of his statue: the lion skin, which covers his
head, the bow with birds ends, and the club. He is also
young and unbearded. The posture and the gestures,
however, are very different. The living Herakles rests his
weight on the left leg, while the right leg, free, is bent
and brought to the back, the heel raised off the ground.
The left arm is bent at the elbow and the hand is grasping
42. See K. Schauenburg, Herakles unter Gttern. Gymnasium
70 (1963):113133, pp. 113ff.; R. Vollkommer, Herakles in
the Art of Classical Greece (Oxford: University Committee for
Archaeology, 1988), pp. 49f.; J. Boardman et al., Herakles, Lexicon
Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae V (19881990):728838; V
(1990):1192; 177ff.
the club, whereas the right hand is raised with the index
finger pointed towards the mouth.
The posture of Herakles and his location within the
field have been taken by von Bothmer as an indication of
the fact that Herakles is descending from the world of the
gods to take a closer look at the statue. Herakles would
be approaching stepping softly, so as not to disturb the
artist.43 Rather than stepping softly, however, Herakles
may be described as in a walking stance, an expression
used in reference to the Doryphoros of Polykleitos,
to define the ambiguity of the posture of this statue,
which is not clearly identifiable as one of walking or
standing still.44 The same combination of weight leg and
free leg positioned well to the rear, so characteristic of
Polykleitos and his school, is also seen on our figure of
Herakles. It is a stance often used on Apulian vases, in
scenes where it remains unclear whether the characters
are walking or standing still.45 This explains Todiscos
alternative suggestion that on our vase Herakles would
be represented in the moment of arresting himself on his
way to the sanctuary.46 This is indeed the most plausible
reading of the stance of Herakles on our vase. In fact,
there is no question that Herakles is making a sudden
appearance on scene, in a sort of epiphany in the
sanctuary.47 This is indicated not only by the location of
Herakles next to the right limit of the field, but also by
the gesture of his right hand, raised, and with the index
finger pointing towards the mouth.
This gesture, which together with the goggling eyes
depicts the response of Herakles to his own portrait, has
thus far been generally misunderstood. Von Bothmer
has commented on the facial expression and gesture of
Herakles by stating that they reveal something of the
attitude of an art critic at an exhibition.48 Along the
43. Von Bothmer (see note 6), p. 156; cp. also D. von Bothmer,
Greek Vase Painting. An Introduction, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art Bulletin 31 (1972):368, no. 27; Borda (see note 19), p. 108; Shefton
(see note 20), p. 175, note 104; Moreno 1984 (see note 8), p. 93.
44. Cp. R. Tobin, The Pose of the Doryphoros, in Polykleitos, the
Doryphoros, and Tradition, ed. W. G. Moon (Madison: The University
of Wisconsin Press, 1995), pp. 5264; A. H. Borbein, Polykleitos,
in Personal Styles in Greek Sculpture, ed. O. Palagia and J. J. Pollitt
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.
6690: pp. 70ff.
45. Cp., e.g., bell krater, Sydney 54.04: Trendall and Cambitoglou
19781982 (see note 5), vol. I, p. 47, no. 13 (Tarporley P.).
46. Todisco (see note 7), p. 937.
47. Todisco also suggests that our scene would be influenced from
satyr drama, in which sudden appearances, surprises, and images
played a significant role. This connection is hard to prove, considering
the absence of satyrs on our vase (see ibid., p. 937ff).
48. Von Bothmer 1972 (see note 43), no. 27.
same lines, Schmidt has written of Herakles as giving

an expert opinion on his own portrait,49 whereas
Hamma has described the hero-god evaluating the
progress on his cult image with a distracted look of
curiosity and mild amusement.50 Other scholars have
described Herakles as admiring or marveling at his
own portrait.51 There is no question, however, that the
response by Herakles can be better described as one of
wonder, as pointed out by Schneider-Hermann, Moreno,
and Oenbrink.52 The gesture of the hand raised with the
index finger pointed towards the mouth can, in fact, be
regarded as a variant of the more common gesture of
bringing the hand to the chin or plucking at the beard.
This gesture, generally used to denote perplexity, first
appears in the Early Classical period, but it becomes
more frequent during the fourth century in both sculpture
and vase painting.53 In South Italian and Sicilian redfigure vase painting, this gesture is often used to denote
the wonder and the puzzlement of a character facing the
unexpected. As for the wonder, one may recall a calyx
krater in Taranto (400390 b.c.), on which a hesitant
Amphitryon is approaching the altar and the pyre of
Alkmene, as the falling thunderbolt of Zeus separates
the two.54 As for the puzzlement, one may recall the
Oedipus listening to the messenger from Corinth on the
fragment of a calyx krater from Syracuse (340 b.c.).55
The best comparison for the gesture on our vase,
however, comes from the bell krater in Paris (390380 b.c.),
featuring the purification of Orestes at Delphi (fig. 10).56
49. Schmidt (see note 7), p. 35.
50. K. Hamma in Mayo and Hamma (see note 19), p. 96.
51. Admiration: Robertson (see note 19), p. 485; Shefton (see note
20), p. 175, note 104; Todisco (see note 7), p. 937; De Cesare 1994
(see note 5), p. 250; De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p. 103. Marvel:
Schefold and Jung (see note 5), p. 228.
52. Schneider-Herrmann (see note 5), p. 40; Moreno 1984 (see
note 8), p. 94; Oenbrink 1997 (see note 1), p. 150.
53. See in general G. Neumann, Gesten und Gebrden in der
griechischen Kunst (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965), pp. 109ff.
54. Taranto 4600: Trendall and Cambitoglou 19781982 (see note
5), vol. I, p. 36, no. 11 (P. of the Birth of Dionysos); O. Taplin, Pots and
Plays (J. Paul Getty Museum: Getty Trust Publications, 2007), p. 171,
no. 57.
55. Syracuse 66557: A. D. Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of
Lucania, Campania and Sicily. Third Supplement (London: Institute of
Classical Studies, 1983), p. 276, no. 98a (Gibil Gabib Group); Taplin
(ibid.), p. 90ff., no. 22.
56. Paris, Louvre K 710: Trendall and Cambitoglou 19781982 (see
note 5), vol. I, p. 97, no. 229 (Eumenides P.); A. Kossatz-Deissmann,
Dramen des Aischylos auf westgriechischen Vasen (Mainz: von
Zabern, 1978), 105, no. K 41, 107f.; H. Sarian, Erinys, Lexicon
Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae III (1986):825843, p. 833, no.
63; Taplin (ibid.), p. 62ff., no. 8.
On this vase one sees Apollo purifying Orestes by

shaking a piglet above his head. Orestes is seated on the
altar, leaning on the omphalos, and still holding the
sword used to kill Clytemnestra. To the right of Apollo is
Artemis, and at the left limit of the field is the ghost of
Clytemnestra trying to wake two Furies who are still
asleep, while a third Fury appears on the lower left. On
this vase, the gesture of the index finger pointed towards
the mouth appears twice, in the figures of Orestes and of
the third Fury, who are also exchanging glances. The two
are reacting to their reciprocal, sudden appearances at
the same time as they are also pondering their next step.
Likewise, on our vase the living Herakles is reacting with
wonder at the sudden appearance of his own statue.
As I have already noted, there is a strong resemblance
between the statue of Herakles and the living hero.
Thus far, this resemblance has strongly conditioned the
interpretation of the relation between the artist, Herakles,
and the statue on our vase. Thus, both von Bothmer and
Todisco have framed that relation in terms of an artist
and model relationship. In particular, von Bothmer57
has evoked the panel by Rogier van der Weyden at the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, showing Saint Luke
drawing the Virgin (fig. 11) as a parallel for our vase.58
Todisco, instead, has pointed to a famous poem in the
Anthologia Graeca by a poet named Plato, in which
Aphrodite is described coming to Knidos wishing to see
her own image. Having looked at the statue made by
Praxiteles, the goddess cries: Where did Praxiteles see
me naked?59
However, framing the relation between the
painter, Herakles, and his statue in terms of an artistmodel relationship is problematic, and precisely the
comparison between our scene and the panel by van der
Weyden should make this point clear. On the painting
by van der Weyden, Saint Luke is face to face with the
Virgin and looking at her, but on our vase the statuepainter is literally turning his back to the real Herakles
and ignoring him. In the case of our vase, one can
hardly speak of a relationship between the artist and his
model. After all, that could not be the case in ancient
Greek and Roman culture, where the representation
of the gods belonged to the realm of imagination, and
not of mimesis. As especially pointed out by Gordon
and Vernant, the making of religious images in the
57. Von Bothmer (see note 6), p. 156.
58. Boston, MFA 93.153.
59. Anthologia Graeca 16.160 (translation by J. J. Pollitt): Todisco
(see note 7), p. 941f; A. Corso, Prassitele (Rome: De Luca, 19881991),
vol. I, pp. 42f.
Figure 10. Purification of Orestes at Delphi. Apulian red-figure bell krater, attributed to the
Eumenides Painter (name-vase), ca. 380370 b.c. Paris, Louvre, K 710. Reproduced from A.
Furtwngler and K. Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei. 3 vols. (Mnchen: Bruckmann,
19041932), pl. 120.3.
ancient Greek and Roman world was a component in

the process of realizing the imaginary. By making the
invisible visible, by making the powers from the world
beyond present in the world below, images of gods were
true illusions, pictures of a world that we cannot know.60
For these reasons, much more appropriate is the
reference by Robertson, in relation to the interpretation
of our vase, to Parrhasioss alleged claim that his picture
of Herakles in Lindos was painted to make the hero
look just as he did when Parrhasios often saw him in his
dreams.61 This connection between artists and images,
and visions of gods in dreams, is also documented by
Pausaniass account of the horse-headed agalma of Black
Demeter made by Onatas near Phigaleia.62
60. R. L. Gordon, The Real and the Imaginary. Production and
Religion in the Graeco-Roman World, Art History II.1 (1979):134; pp.
11ff.; J.-P. Vernant, Mortals and Immortals, ed. F. I. Zeitlin (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 151ff.
61.Pliny, Naturalis Historia 35.72: . . . Herculem, qui est Lindi,
talem a se pictum, qualem saepe in quiete vidisset (translation by J.
J. Pollitt); cp. also Athenaeus 12.543F. See Robertson (see note 19), p.
485, and Schefold and Jung (see note 5), p. 228.
62. Pausanias 8.42.7: see Gordon (see note 60), p. 15; J. Tanner,
The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece (Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 50.
It should be pointed out that although on our vase

there are significant similarities between the statue
of Herakles and the living Herakles, there are also
deliberate differences, mentioned in the past, but never
fully discussed.63 One difference concerns the attributes,
which are the same, but are handled in different ways.
For example, on the statue the lion skin is removed from
the head and allows for a full display of the flowing hair,
while the club is moved from the side to a full view in
the front. A similar opposition concerns posture and
attitude: The living Herakles is casual in his posture and
emotional in his gesturing, whereas his statue is selfconfident in displaying the nudity and the beauty of his
body. To use Richters words, the living Herakles is not
nearly so heroic a figure as his statue.64
This explicit differentiation between the living figure
and his statue seems to reflect developments in fourthcentury art.65 One is reminded of the painter, sculptor,
63. Von Bothmer (see note 6), p. 158; Schefold and Jung (see note
5), p. 228; De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p. 183.
64. Richter (see note 5), p. 116.
65. See esp. T. B. L. Webster, Plato and Aristotle as Critics of Greek
Art, SymbOslo 29 (1952):823. p. 18f.
Figure 11. Rogier van der Weyden. Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin, ca.
14351440. Oil and tempera on panel, 137.5 x 110.8 cm. Boston,
Museum of Fine Arts, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Lee Higginson 93.153.
Photograph 2011 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
and art theorist Euphranor, who according to Pliny,

was the first to express the dignity of heroes (dignitates
heroum), in explicit contrast with previous generations of
artists.66 Thus, according to the same source, Euphranor
explicitly contrasted his own meat-fed Theseus with
Parrhasioss roses-fed Theseus.67 Along similar lines,
Dio Chrysostom tells us that Euphranors Hephaistos
66.Pliny, Naturalis Historia 35.128: J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient
View of Greek Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press
1974), pp. 347ff.; O. Palagia, Euphranor (Leiden: Brill, 1980), p. 9;
N. Himmelmann, Der ausruhende Herakles (Paderborn: Schningh,
2009), pp. 181ff.
67. Pliny (ibid.), 35.129.
was not lame.68 This interest of fourth century artists in

the representation of grandeur and high moral character
extended from heroes and gods to portraiture. For
Aristotle, the good portrait painters are those who while
reproducing the distinctive form of the original, make a
likeness that is true to life and yet more beautiful.69 It is
within this context that Theophrastuss flatterer tells his
patron that his portrait is like him.70
The differentiation between a living hero-god and his
image seen in our scene does not come as a surprise
68. Dio Chrysostom 37.43.
69.Aristotle, Poetics, 1454b, 911.
70.Theophrastus, Characters 2.12.
Figure 12. Rape of Kassandra. Athenian black-figure amphora, ca. 550 b.c. Reproduced
from E. Gerhard, Auserlesene griechische Vasenbilder (Berlin: Reimer, 1847), vol. 3, pl.
228, no. 1.
once we consider the long history of representations of

statues on Greek vases that precedes our krater. A closer
look at this tradition is now necessary, since it is within
this framework that one can better understand the larger
implications of our image.
In Archaic art, the particular emphasis on the identity
between the divinity and its image finds expression in
representations that make manifest that the represented
is not just in the image, but that the represented is the
image.71 This is best seen in images of the rape of
Kassandra, which illustrate the moment in which Ajax
is trying to separate the Trojan prophetess from the
statue of Athena in her temple at Troy.72 In the earliest
71. Schefold (see note 1), p. 41; De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), pp.
79ff.; Oenbrink 1997 (see note 1), pp. 340ff.; F. Hlscher, Gods and
Statues: An Approach to Archaistic Images in the Fifth Century BCE, in
Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome,
ed. J. Mylonopoulos (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 105120,
p. 113.
72. See esp. Schefold (ibid.), pp. 41ff.; J.-M. Moret, LIlioupersis
dans la cramique italiote (Rome: Istituto Svizzero, 1975), pp. 9ff.; O.
Touchefeu, Aias II, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae
I (1981):336351; Alroth (note 1), pp. 12ff.; J. B. Connelly, Narrative
and Image in Attic Vase Painting, in Narrative and Event in Ancient
Art, ed. Peter J. Holliday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
representations of this myth (fig. 12), between the second

and the third quarters of the sixth century, we see the
goddess herself intervening in defense of Kassandra, as if
the prophetess were not seeking protection next to the
statue of Athena, but next to Athena herself. This same
statue of Athena is the focus of a famous episode
described in Iliad VI, in which Homer introduces the
Trojan women supplicating Athena to stop Diomedes
from ravaging the Trojans any further.73 The women reach
the temple of Athena on the peak of the citadel, and
once the priestess Theano has opened the doors for
them, they lift their hands to Athena with a wailing cry,
as if facing the goddess herself, and not her image.
Theano then lays on the knees of the statue a robe,
presented as a votive offering to Athena, and supplicates
her to stop Diomedes and to have pity on the Trojans,
promising rich sacrifices in exchange. She spoke in
prayerconcludes Homerbut Pallas Athena turned her
1993), pp. 88129; O. Paoletti, Kassandra I, Lexicon Iconographicum

Mythologiae Classicae VII (1994):956970; De Cesare 1997 (note 1),
pp. 87ff., 123ff.; Oenbrink (ibid.), pp. 34ff.; M. Mangold, Kassandra in
Athen (Berlin: D. Reimer, 2000), pp. 34ff.; Hlscher (ibid.), pp. 113ff.
73. Iliad 6.297311.
head from her.74 What is remarkable about this Homeric

passage is the absence of an explicit reference to a statue
of the goddess. The poet keeps referring to Athena,
meaning both the goddess and her image, and this
identification between representation and represented
makes it impossible to decide, in the case of the last line,
whether it is the statue of the goddess or the goddess
herself who is denying support to the Trojans by the turn
of her head. In the depictions of the rape of Kassandra
that I have just mentioned, the same identification
between representation and represented applies to the
image of Athena protecting the prophetess, the very
same image featured in the passage of the Iliad: like in
the text of Homer, this image is simply Athena,
meaning both the goddess and her statue. This failure
to distinguish god and statue at the linguistic level is not
confined to Homer, but is typical of Greek and Roman
culture.75 The use of the name of the divinity, or the term
divinity in reference to its statue, is first of all
documented in inscriptions, such as those from the
Sanctuary of Hera at Samos, which refer to the images of
the goddess in the temple as he theos, the divinity.76
The same use is also documented by literary sources, first
of all Pausanias, who, in reference to statues of gods,
sometimes uses the expression agalma followed by the
name of the divinity in the genitive, and sometimes
simply the divinitys name.77
In the iconography of the rape of Kassandra, a
change takes place during the Late Archaic period,
when Athena is now clearly represented in the form
of a statue, instead of a living person (fig. 13). The
goddess is set on a tall base, and is smaller than the
living characters. Still, this goddess in the form of a
statue appears to retain the same energy of the living
goddess of previous iconography, judging from the
way it confronts Ajax in its effort to protect Kassandra.
This transformation in the iconography of the rape of
Kassandra is not fortuitous. In fact, during these same
years, representations of statues make their appearance
74. Ibid., 6.311 (translation by R. Lattimore); A. Stewart, Greek

Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 44; S. Bettinetti,
La statua di culto nella pratica rituale greca (Bari: Levante, 2001), pp.
26f.
75. Gordon (see note 60), pp. 7ff.; A. A. Donohue, The Greek
Images of the Gods: Considerations on Terminology and Methodology,
Hephaistos 15 (1997):3145, p. 37; Bettinetti (ibid.), pp. 25ff.
76. I. B. Romano, Early Greek Cult Images, Ph.D. diss. (University
of Pennsylvania, 1980), pp. 255ff.; Bettinetti (ibid.), p. 21.
77. Gordon (see note 60), pp. 7f.
Figure 13. Rape of Kassandra. Athenian black-figure neck

amphora, attributed to the Painter of the Montauban Centaurs,
ca. 490 b.c. Art Market. Reproduced from Christies Manson
and Woods sale catalogue: 5.5.1979, pl. 22, no. 63.
in Greek vase painting.78 In addition, during the Late

Archaic period representations of sculptors working on
statues inside their workshops are introduced on vases.79
With the transition into the fifth century, literary sources
confirm this heightened appreciation of the factural
rather than living quality of statues, along with the
perception of the gap between them and the reality they
represent.80 The representation of Athena as a statue in
78. De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), pp. 87ff.; Oenbrink 1997 (see
note 1), pp. 346f.
79. De Cesare (ibid.), pp. 179ff.
80. Cp., e.g., Aeschylus, Agamemnon 416417: M. Stieber,
Aeschylus Theoroi and Realism in Greek Art, Transactions of the
American Philological Association 124 (1994):85119, pp. 104ff.; W.
A. P. Childs, Platon, les images et lart grec du IVe sicle avant J.-C,
Revue Archologique (1994):3356; pp. 35f.; D. Steiner, Images in
Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 49f.
Figure 14. Ilioupersis. Athenian red-figure calyx krater, attributed to the Altamura Painter, ca. 470460 b.c. Ceramic, h. 48 cm; d. 49
cm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, William Francis Warden Fund, 1959, 59.178. Photograph 2011 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
the Late Archaic iconography of the rape of Kassandra

shows that this heightened appreciation of the factural
quality of statues was being extended to images of gods.
In Late Archaic vase painting the living divinities
and their statues are portrayed very similarly, but by the
beginning of the Early Classical period artists tend to
differentiate them (fig. 14). In representations of statues
in sanctuaries or temples, this attitude often translates
as showing the statues of the divinities as in an earlier
style, and distancing them from the narrative by turning
their body frontally to the viewerunlike the living
figures, who are featured with their bodies and heads
in profileor by setting them on top of a tall support.81
It has been suggested that this transformation would
reflect a changing attitude towards the images of gods,
as a consequence of a decline in religious belief in
the increasing secular society of fifth-century Athens.82
Under the attacks on idolatry by philosophers like
Herakelitos (500 b.c.), who once remarked that talking
to statues of gods was equivalent to conversing with
houses,83 the Greeks would have started thinking of
their images of gods as deprived of their magical power,
and conspicuous in their dress and ornament for the

viewing, but empty of heart, to quote a famous remark
by Demokritos.84 This line of interpretation is problematic
since it tends to overestimate the influence of iconoclasts
on contemporary culture. As noted long ago by Dodds,
thinkers like Xenophanes and Herakleitos give the
impression of being isolated figures even in Ionia, and
it was a long time before their ideas found any echo on
the Mainland, probably only by the time of Euripides.85
A famous passage of Porphyry reporting a remark by
Aischylos on the new Early Classical style suggests a
different interpretation for the transformation of statues
of gods on vases during this period. According to
Aischylos, the old statues, though simply made, are
thought divine; while the new, though superbly wrought,
have less of the divine in them.86 As noted by several
commentators, this remark by Aischylos emphasizes
the inherent danger attached to the strengthening of
the illusion of life achieved by Early Classical sculptors.
By bringing the images of the gods closer to the living
world, sculptors ended up sacrificing some of the
mysterious and supernatural powers of archaic statues.
note 1), pp. 344ff.
82. See esp. De Cesare (ibid.), pp. 77f., 87f., 180ff. Contra
Hlscher (see note 71), pp. 119f.
83. H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 7th
ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 19541956), p. 22 B 5 (G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven,
and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983], p. 209); W. Burkert, Greek
Religion, trans. J. Raffan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1985), pp. 9192; Steiner (see note 80), pp. 121f.; Tanner (see note 62),
p. 53f.
84. Diels and Kranz (ibid.), p. 68 B 195; Stewart (see note 74), p.
45; Steiner (ibid.), pp. 122ff.
85. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1951), p. 182.
86.Porphyry, de Abstinentia, 2.18 (translation by A. Stewart): C.
H. Hallett, The Origins of the Classical Style in Sculpture, Journal
of Hellenic Studies 106 (1986):7184, p. 79; A. Borbein, Kanon und
Ideal. Kritische Aspekte der Hochklassik, Athenische Mitteilungen
100 (1985):253270; p. 260; Stewart (see note 74), pp. 134f.; De
Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p. 79. For a different take on this passage cp.
Hlscher (see note 71), pp. 106ff.
That this interpretation of the remark by Aischylos is

correct seems to be indicated by the presence in many
Greek sanctuaries of the Classical and later periods
of two statues of the same divinity inside the temple:
the Archaic idol, primitive in form but credited with
supernatural qualities and thus regularly involved in
ritual actions outside the temple, and the new image,
the statue that exteriorizes the presence of the god in
the intimacy of the temple where it is contained.87 This
coexistence came as a sort of compromise in an attempt
to restore the balance between old magic and modern
illusion, but in the end it proved to be the most effective
solution. It was a solution certainly more effective
than that of producing pseudo-archaic or archaistic
statues, one of the two alternatives left to the sculptors
attempting to restore the distance between the statues of
gods and their worshippers; the other alternative being
the production of a whole new generation of magnificent
and spectacular images, such as the chryselephantine
statues by Pheidias.88 It is within this framework that we
can better interpret the tendency of vase painters of the
Early Classical period to both differentiate the statues
of gods from the living gods, making them look earlier
in style and to separate them from the narrative actions
to which they belong. In the Early Classical period, the
difference between old and new images of the gods
had become an issue, and it is this issue that one sees
reflected, either consciously or at the subliminal level, in
the work of the vase painters: statues of gods, if divine,
are simply made.
Around the middle of the fifth century, the
representation of statues on vases and the relationship
between statues of gods and living gods takes on a
whole new dimension. Representation and represented
are separated, and the image of the divinity is doubled,
becoming both the living god and its representation,
standing near to each other.89 This separation is
anticipated in some early-fifth-century representations of
the theft of the Palladion, where the statue is represented
along with the goddess Athena,90 but it is only towards
the middle of the century that this doubling of the image
of the divinity becomes standard.
87. Vernant (see note 60), pp. 153ff.; Bettinetti (see note 74), pp.
20ff.; cp. the case of Samos: Romano (see note 76), pp. 255ff.
88. Borbein (see note 86), pp. 260ff.; Stewart (see note 74), pp. 44f.
note 1), pp. 347f.; Hlscher (see note 71), pp. 116f.
90. De Cesare 1997 (ibid.), pp. 145ff.; Oenbrink (ibid.), pp. 65ff.
Cp. in particular the amphora Stockholm, Medelhavsmuseum 1963.1:
ARV 2 1643, no. 33bis (Tyskiewicz P.), 1708; Add 2 210; De Cesare
1997 (ibid.), p. 237, no. 72; Oenbrink (ibid.), p. 367, no. A10.
Representations of the rape of Kassandra are once

again very useful, since this iconography offers the best
examples of this new transformation. Thus, on a neck
amphora in Cambridge (450 b.c.), one sees Athena
standing behind her own statue, which Kassandra is
grasping with both hands (fig. 15).91 In these scenes,
the fact that the statue of Athena is turned frontally to
the viewer makes the handling of the spear by the idol
totally ineffective for the purpose of protecting the Trojan
prophetess. However, the living goddess, by raising
her right hand in a protective gesture, compensates for
that ineffectiveness. Vases like this are revealing about
the process of separation between representation and
represented taking place in Greek culture of the High
Classical period in relation to statues of gods. Statues
of gods are no longer the living gods, but rather
inanimate images that nonetheless retain the power to
materialize the divine presence, and making present
the living gods.92
It is a misunderstanding of Greek piety to believe that
this separation between images and imaged that one
sees on the vases would indicate that the statues of the
gods had not only lost their life, but also their power of
connecting mortals and immortals.93 According to this
line of interpretation, under the attacks on idolatry by
iconoclasts and now also by atheists like Anaxagoras,
statues of gods would have become not a bridge, but
rather a barrier between this world below and the world
beyond. This line of interpretation does not seem to
take into account the fact that for this generation of
Greeks (one may quote Herodotus)94 the use of images
of gods, along with temples and altars, had now become
a prerequisite of civilization and a crucial element
for the definition of its cultural and ethnic identity.95
Nor does it account for the fact that this generation of
Greeks (one may again quote Herodotus)96 strongly
believed in cult statues as embodiments of the power
of the sacred, and in the close connection between the
possession of cult statues, command of the power of
91. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College: ARV 2 1058, no. 114
(Group of Polygnotos); Add 2 323; De Cesare 1997 (ibid.), p. 232, no.
39; Oenbrink (ibid.), p. 369, no. A23.
92. See esp. A. Schnapp, Why Did the Greeks Need Images?
In Proceedings of the 3rd Symposium on Ancient Greek and
Related Pottery, ed. J. Christiansen and T. Melander (Copenhagen:
Nationalmuseet; Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek; Thorvaldsens Museum,
1988), pp. 568574, pp. 569f.; Stewart (see note 74), p. 45.
93. Cp. more recently De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p. 89.
94. Herodotus 1.131; 4.59.
95. Schnapp (see note 92), pp. 569f.
96. Herodotus 5.8081, 8.64, 8384.
Figure 15. Rape of Kassandra. Athenian red-figure neck amphora, attributed to the Group of
Polygnotos, ca. 450 b.c. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College. Reproduced from W. Froehner,
Collection de M. Albert B[arre] (Paris, 1878), pl. 6, no. 330.
the sacred and political autonomy.97 In addition, this

line of interpretation does not seem to take into account
the fact that as late as in the second century c.e., to
Artemidorus of Daldis, statues of gods seen in dreams
had the same meaning as the gods themselves from the
point of view of the dream interpreter.98 To this, one may
add that this line of interpretation seems to miss what
the vases do actually represent: the divinity next to its
image. By showing the divinity in close proximity to its
statue, these vases are emphasizing the fact that statues
of gods translate in a visible way the invisible presence
of the gods, acting as symbolic manifestations of their
presence, and that statues of gods are powerful catalysts
for the divine presence. Statues of gods, far from being
a barrier between mortals and immortals, are a crucial
bridge. They can be inanimate and they can only stand
for a living god: however, next to a statue of a god stands
a living god.
97. Tanner (see note 62), p. 41ff.
98. Artemidorus, Oneirocritica, 2.39; Schnapp (see note 92),
p. 573; P. C. Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994), pp. 28ff.; J. Elsner, Image and Ritual:
Reflections on the Religious Appreciation of Classical Art, Classical
Quarterly 46 (1996):515531, p. 516; Donohue (see note 75), p. 36.
This basic principle is reasserted by representations

of divinities associated with their statues in the late
fifth and early fourth century, especially those on South
Italian vases. In South Italian vase painting, the earliest
occurrence of the separation of representation and
represented is on a bell krater at Basilea (430 b.c.),
featuring the myth of Laokoon (fig. 16).99 On one side of
this vase, one sees at the left limit the statue of Apollo
with serpents entwined round its body and the severed
limbs of Laokoons son at his feet. At the right limit of the
scene, the living Apollo turns his head in the direction of
his own statue and looks at the woman intervening along
with Laokoon against the serpents. Here the painter is
playing with the fact that although the statue and the
living god have the same attributes, a bow and a stalk
of laurel, they are stylistically different, as regards both
their posture and hairstyle: The statue of Apollo reminds
us of a Late Archaic kouros, while the living Apollo
has a decidedly Classical look. This contrast becomes
99. Basilea, Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig 70; Trendall

(see note 55), p. 6, no. 33a (Pisticci P.); Trendall (see note 5), p. 19;
Alroth (see note 1), pp. 20f.; De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p. 228, no.
11; Oenbrink 1997 (see note 1), p. 386, no. D13.
Figure 16. Laokoon. Lucanian red-figure bell-krater, attributed to the Pisticci Painter, ca. 430 b.c. Basel,
Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig 70. Image Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig, Basel.
more pronounced on the fragments of a calyx krater in

Amsterdam (400385 b.c.; fig. 17).100 These fragments
show a temple of Apollo, with the doors open and a
colossal bronze statue of the god inside. To the right of
the temple is the living Apollo, playing the lyre. Here
again the statue and the living god are differentiated: The
statue is an Early Classical figure, close in style to works
such as the Kassel Apollo, while the living god is a High
Classical figure.
This process of differentiation between the statue
and the living god is the more striking because the
living god is juxtaposed with a highly mimetic image.
However, that juxtaposition could take more extreme
forms. In fact, since the second half of the fifth century,
vase painters also display the living divinities along
100. Amsterdam 2579: Trendall and Cambitoglou 19781982

(see note 5), vol. I, p. 36, no. 10 (P. of the Birth of Dionysos); Trendall
(ibid.), p. 28; Alroth (ibid.), p. 39; De Cesare 1997 (ibid.), no. 9;
Oenbrink 1997 (see note 1), p. 385, no. D7.
with their Archaic idols.101 In these years, archaic

idols were also represented in sculpture, which would
indicate a general surge of interest in these early forms
of representation of divinities.102 The display of the living
divinities along with their archaic idols is first seen on
a volute krater in Ferrara (420 b.c.), featuring the myth
of Thamyris and the Muses.103 On this vase, the living
Muses are accompanied by their archaic idols above the
altar. These idols, although primitive in their forms, are
powerful enough to stir a reaction of surprise on the part
of Argiope, the mother of Thamyris. Representations of
101. Here I follow the distinction between image and idol
suggested by Vernant (see note 60), pp. 153ff.
102. Cp., e.g., the Palladion on the Parthenon metopes, on which
see K. A. Schwab, The Palladion and Its Multiple Functions in the
Parthenon North Metopes, in Essays in Honor of Dietrich von Bothmer,
ed. A. J. Clark and J. Gaunt (Amsterdam: Allard Pierson Museum,
2002), pp. 293296.
103. Ferrara, Museo Nazionale di Spina 3033: ARV 2 1171, no. 1
(Polion), 1685; Para 459; Add 2 338; De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p.
240, no. 88.
Figure 17. Apollo. Fragments of an Apulian red-figure calyx krater attributed to the Painter of the
Birth of Dionysos, ca. 400385 b.c. Courtesy of the Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam.
living divinities along with their archaic idols become

more frequent in fourth-century vase painting. On a
volute krater in Naples (400 b.c.), which opens the series,
a primitive figure of Dionysos stands behind the altar in a
sanctuary of the god, while Dionsyos himself is watching
the performance of a sacrifice in his honor from the
upper register.104 The juxtaposition of the living divinity
and her archaic idol is standard in representations of the
story of Iphigenia in Tauris, not surprisingly, considering
that Euripides wrote a whole play centered on the bretas
of Taurian Artemis fallen from the sky, capable of turning
away from its place and moving its eyes.105 The earliest
occurrence of Artemis and her archaic idol is on a
fragment in Heidelberg (400390 b.c.).106 The idol, which
serves as the statue of Taurian Artemis, holds the same
104. Neaples 82922: Trendall and Cambitoglou 19781982 (see

note 5), vol. I, p. 35, no. 8 (P. of the Birth of Dionysos); Alroth (see note
1), p. 39; De Cesare 1997 (ibid.), p. 253, no. 174.
105.Euripides, Iphigeneia among the Taurians, 11651167: Stewart
(see note 74), p. 45; Steiner (see note 80), p. 159.
106. Heidelberg 25.04: Trendall and Cambitoglou 19781982
(see note 5), vol. I, p. 41, no. 28 (connected with the P. of the Birth of
Dionysos); De Cesare 1997 (see note 1), p. 229, no. 15.
attribute as the living goddess, a bow. As pointed out by

De Cesare, here the separation between representation
and represented and the configuration of the statue in an
archaic, primitive form are suggestive of the antiquity of
the sanctuary and the local worship of the divinity. This
brings us back to the general interpretation of this series
of vases featuring living gods along with their images. By
showing the divinity in more or less close proximity to
its statue, the vases are both saying that the image of a
god is lifeless, and that by approaching it you are coming
closer to a god.
Seen against this tradition of representations of
gods near to their own images, the peculiarities of
the scene on our vase stand out more clearly. Like
never before, the god is not just near to his image, or
generically looking into its direction, but is clearly
intent at recognizing it. And like never before, the statue
is not just of a different material and shape than the
god, but is still being finished by color, caught in the
moment before it will start serving its function in ritual
practice and deceive the worshippers with its illusion.
The vase painter, by juxtaposing a living god staring at
a god in progress who happens to be himself, a better
version of himself, appears here to be carrying to their
extreme limits both the notion that the statue of a god is

inanimate and the notion that the statue makes the living
god present.107
One is reminded here of a famous passage concerning
the statues of the gods in Platos Laws, placed in the
context of a discussion of the honors and dishonors paid
to parents: [T]he ancient laws of all men concerning
the gods are two-fold: some of the gods [the stars]
whom we honor we see clearly; but of others we set up
statues as images, and we believe that when we worship
these, lifeless though they be, the living gods beyond
feel great good-will towards us and gratitude.108 On
our vase, as in Plato, the statue of a god (agalma) is an
inanimate (apsychos) image (eikon) that makes the living
(empsychos) god present.
This new status of the statue of the god is strongly
dependent on the new status of the image at the turn
from the fifth to the fourth century b.c. As pointed
out by Jean Pierre Vernant, in these years, under the
influence of the theory of mimesis, the turn is completed
in Greek culture that leads from the presentification,
the making present, of the invisible to the imitation of
appearance. It is at this time that the category of figural
representation emerges in its specific features and that
the representation is now transformed into an image
that is the product of an expert imitation, which, as a
result of skilful technique and illusionist procedures,
enters into the general category of the fictitiousthat
which we call art.109
On Apulian vases, the entrance of the statue into
the general category of the fictitious is marked by
the use of color to distinguish it from the living figures.
On Apulian vases, beginning with the fragmentary
krater in Amsterdam, statues of gods, and statues in
general, are no longer of the same color as the living
figures, the red of clay, but are instead painted white
to indicate their nature as artifacts, whether of marble
or bronze. This is what one sees on our vase, where it
is the color, the shining white with diluted yellow, that
marks the sharpest visual contrast between the statue
107. It is generally assumed that the moment represented on our
vase is the one after the sculptor has finished his work and the statue
is set up on its base ready to be finished by the painter: see esp. von
Bothmer (note 6), p. 156; Cambitoglou and Trendall 1961 (see note 5),
p. 19; Schneider-Herrmann (see note 5), p. 40; K. Hamma in Mayo and
Hamma (see note 19), p. 96.
108.Plato, Laws 11.931a (translation by R. G. Bury); Schnapp (see
note 92), p. 571; Stewart (see note 74), p. 45; Childs (see note 80), p.
42.
109. Vernant (see note 60), p. 152.
Figure 18. Apulian red-figure loutrophoros, attributed to the

Metope Painter, 370350 b.c. The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Purchase, The Bernard and Audrey Aronson Charitable Trust
Gift, in memory of her beloved husband, Bernard Aronson,
1995 (1995.45.1). Image The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
of Herakles and the living Herakles, who has the same

red flesh, which is the mark of the other living figures.
This opposition is not an accident, since in a few years it
becomes central to this production.
Immediately after the production of our krater, in the
years between 370 and 330 b.c., statues enter in fact
in large numbers in the repertoire of Apulian vases, in
scenes related to the cult of the dead, where they are
found both within naiskoi and as free-standing figures
on a plinth (fig. 18). On these vases, the statues serve
both as idealized images of the dead, surrounded by
the community of mourners, and as expressions of
their social standing, expressed through types such as
the young warrior or the mistress accompanied by her
maid.110 The main characteristic of these statues is that
110. Schmidt, Trendall, and Cambitoglou 1976, 20ff.; H. Lohmann,
Grabmler auf unteritalischen Vasen (Berlin: Mann, 1979), pp. 25ff.;
L. Massei, Schemi statuari nella ceramica apula, in Aparchai. Nuove
they are usually painted in added white, to simulate the

marble or the stuccoed limestone of the originals that
they are supposed to represent.111
The practice of painting statues on vases in white, in
order to distinguish them from the living figures, goes
back to the High Classical period, and is first found on
the bell krater in Bonn (420 b.c.) showing the finding
of the egg from which Helen was born.112 However, it
is only on Apulian vases of the fourth century that this
use becomes canonical, in step with the new theory of
mimesis developing at the transition from the fifth to the
fourth century b.c.113
Where this innovation was heading, in the fourth
century, is best revealed by a very important passage
of Poetics 4, where Aristotle identifies two features of
human nature that he takes to explain the existence of
poetry. In many ways, this passage represents one of the
best commentaries on our image of Herakles wondering
at his own portrait being painted:
Poetry in general can be seen to owe its existence to two
causes, and these are rooted in nature. First, there is mans
natural propensity, from childhood onwards, to engage in
mimetic activity (and this distinguishes man from other
creatures, that he is thoroughly mimetic and through
mimesis takes his first steps in understanding). Second, there
is the pleasure which all men take in mimetic objects.
An indication of the latter can be observed in practice: for
we take pleasure in contemplating the most precise images
of things whose sight in itself causes us painsuch as the
appearance of the basest animals, or of corpses. Here too
the explanation lies in the fact that great pleasure is derived
from exercising the understanding, not just for philosophers
but in the same way for all men, though their capacity for it
may be limited. It is for this reason that men enjoy looking at
images, because what happens is that, as they contemplate
them, they apply their understanding and reasoning to
each element (identifying this as an image of such-andsuch a man, for instance). Since, if it happens that one has
no previous familiarity with the sight, then the object will
not give pleasure qua mimetic object but because of its
craftmanship, or colour, or for some other such reason.114
ricerche e studi sulla Magna Grecia e la Sicilia antica in onore di Paolo
Enrico Arias (Pisa, 1982), pp. 483500, 483ff.; Trendall (see note 5), pp.
266ff.
111. Reuterswrd (see note 8), pp. 92ff.; Todisco (see note 7), p.
912ff; Brinkmann (see note 5), p. 25.
112. Bonn, Akademisches Kunstmuseum 78: ARV 2 1171, no. 4
(Polion); Para 459; Add 2 339; Alroth (see note 1), pp. 21ff.; De Cesare
1997 (see note 1), p. 260, no. 211; Oenbrink 1997 (see note 1), p. 387,
no. E1.
113. On white for statues on vases see esp. Schefold (see note 1),
p. 66; Oenbrink (ibid.), pp. 201ff.
114.Aristotle, Poetics 1448b419 (translation by S. Halliwell).
For a long time, this passage has been dismissed

as marginal or digressive, but recent scholarship on
mimesis, in particular the work of Stephen Halliwell, has
done justice to it.115 In this passage, Aristotle is providing
an explanation of the origins and causes of poetry
and of mimetic art in general, and defining the very
nature of the psychology of mimetic art. In so doing, he
clearly distinguishes between the cognitively grounded
pleasure derived from recognizing the representational
significance of a mimetic object and the pleasures that,
though linked to the experience of a mimetic work, are
potentially independent of its representational character
and linked to its being the product of skilful technique:
like the pleasure in the execution (apergasia) and in the
coloring (chroia).
Although Plato was not interested in the pleasure
aroused by a work of art in the way Aristotle was, there
is a similar emphasis in his work on the response to
works of visual arts as the products of both mimesis
and techne. Thus, in a passage of the Laws where Plato
defines the necessary prerequisites for literary and art
criticism, the philosopher argues that the judicious
critic must know first what the subject of the painting or
sculpture is; and then, he must know the proportions and
the composition and the colors and the shapes. To sum
up his argument, the Athenian states: In regard, then,
to every representationwhether in painting, music
or any other artmust not the judicious critic possess
these three requisites: first, a knowledge of the nature of
the original; next, a knowledge of the correctness of the
copy; and thirdly, a knowledge of the excellence with
which the copy is executed?116
To come back to the quoted passage of Aristotles
Poetics on our krater, the posture and gesture of the
living Herakles seem to illustrate the first response to
mimetic art: the pleasure of recognition, of reasoning
that the statue represents himself. At the same time,
the situation represented, of the gaze at a statue being
painted, alludes to the pleasure provided by the statue as
an artifact, because of its craftsmanship and color.
Today, we are in a better position to understand
Aristotles reference to this pleasure that comes from
color. A revolution in the study of ancient polychromy is
revealing to us a new face of ancient sculpture, one fully
115. S. Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2002), pp. 177ff.; see also Webster (see note 65), pp.
13ff.
116. Laws 669ab (translation by R. G. Bury): Webster (see note
65), pp. 12f.; M. L. Catoni, Schemata: comunicazione non verbale
nella Grecia antica (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2005), pp. 318ff.
covered by vivid colors.117 The cooperation of painters

and sculptors began in the Archaic period, but it was
only in the fourth century, when the fictitious, not
presentational nature of statues has become central
to their discussion, that we find significant references
to it. This is the case of the passage by Aristotle, as well
as a passage in the Republic of Plato, which is all about
the response to the painting of statues: It is as if we
were coloring a statuewrites Platoand someone
approached and censured us, saying that we did not
apply the most beautiful pigments to the most beautiful
parts of the image, since the eyes, which are the most
beautiful part, have not been painted with purple but
with black. We should think it a reasonable justification
to reply, Dont expect us, quaint friend, to paint the eyes
so fine that they will not be like eyes at all, nor the other
parts. But observe whether by assigning what is proper to
each we render the whole beautiful.118
It is within this context that one can frame references
in literary sources to the collaboration of fourth-century
sculptors and painters, like Plinys remark that Praxiteles
most valued those of his statues to which the painter
Nikias had put his hand.119
This passage is often mentioned in discussions of our
vase,120 in spite of the fact that our scene shows a rather
different situation. Unlike Praxiteles, the sculptor is not
present on the scene to express his appreciation for the
work of the painter. An explanation for this omission
may come from the inventories of the Delian temples,
which show that in the early third century the sculptor
and the painter had achieved the same level of prestige
and social recognition. A case in point is offered by the
inventories of the year 279 b.c. In Delos, every year, a
new wooden agalma was commissioned for the festival
of Dionysos in the month of Galaxion.121 This agalma
consisted of a phallus in the form of a bird, brought in
procession in a cart. The inventories detail the cost of
the new statue, mentioning twenty-four drachmas for the
117. Ebbinghaus (see note 16).
118.Plato, Republic 4.420cd (translation by P. Shorey): G. M.
A. Richter, The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, 4th ed. (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970), p. 132; V. Manzelli,
La policromia nella statuaria greca arcaica (Rome: LErma di
Bretschneider, 1994), pp. 93f.; Catoni (see note 116), pp. 318ff.
119. Cp. more recently, P. Jockey, Praxitle et Nicias, le dbat sur
la polychromie de la statuaire antique, in Praxitle, ed. A. Pasquier
and J.-L. Martinez (Paris: Muse du Louvre and Somogy, 2007), pp.
6281.
120. See, for example, Richter (note 5), p. 117.
121. For the Delian Dionysia and the agalma see P. Bruneau,
Recherches sur les cultes de Dlos lpoque hellnistique et
lpoque impriale (Paris: Boccard, 1970), pp. 312ff.
wood, five drachmas for the sculptor (Aristothales), five

drachmas for the encaustic painter (Deinomenes), and
finally six drachmas and four obols for the kosmesis of
the statue, the adornment that prepared the image for
its use in ritual.122 This document not only confirms that
sculptor and painter were two separate figures, but it also
shows that equal sums were paid to them, indicating
an equal level of prestige and social recognition.123 This
would explain why in our vase the sculptor is absent and
the painter takes center stage.
I began this essay by evoking the strong tendency of
Greek vase painting towards self-reference, and Apulian
vases are no exception. It is within this context of selfreference and self-promotion that I would like to frame
the celebration of painting on our krater: A celebration
that went so far as to show Nike seated right above the
painter, with the same spirit of pride in achievementas
first pointed out by Schmidt124 that is expressed on
the well-known Athenian red-figure hydria in Milan,
featuring a vase workshop visited by Athena and Nikai,
crowning some of the artists at work.125 The fact that the
goddess holds no crown in her hand seems to me to be a
deliberate act of omission by the vase painter, identifying
himself with the statue painter, and worried by the idea
of going as far as committing hybris. If Nike held the
crown, in fact, the viewer would remain undecided as to
whether the goddess of victory is making her epiphany in
the sanctuary to crown the living Herakles, the statue of
Herakles, or its painter.
122. IG XI 2, 161 A, ll. 8991: Nouveau choix dinscriptions de
Dlos, ed. C. Prtre (Athnes: EFA, 2002), pp. 59ff. For the agalma cp.
Romano (see note 76), pp. 190ff. For the kosmesis see also J. Marcad,
Au muse de Dlos (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1969), pp. 98ff. In general,
on artisans in Delian inscriptions see C. Feyel in Prtre (ibid.), pp.
264ff. and C. Feyel, Les artisans dans les sanctuaires grecs aux poques
classique et hellnistique (Athens and Paris: cole franaise dAthnes,
2006).
123. As especially pointed out by Richter (see note 118), p. 131.
124. Schmidt (see note 7), p. 35.
125. Milan, Banca Intesa: ARV 2 571 num. 73 (Leningrad P.),
1659; Para 390; Add 2 261; Vidale (see note 28), pp. 277ff. Todisco
has read the position of Nike right above the artist as if the goddess
were waiting for the statue to be finished, in order then to glorify him
with a crown (Todisco [see note 7], pp. 928, 930). Todisco adds the
suggestion (followed by De Cesare 1994 [see note 5], p. 250) that
Nike may be holding a crown, or another attribute of victory, in her
right hand, an attribute that would have been rendered by added color,
and which would have now vanished. This last suggestion, however, is
very unlikely, since the position of the right hand is one of rest on the
ground, with the palm open, and not clenched, as one would expect
from a figure holding an attribute. Cp., e.g., among the Apulian Painters
of the Plain Style, the left hand of the seated Herakles on the bell krater
Madrid 32658 (Cambitoglou and Trendall 1961 [see note 5]; Bendis P.,
59 no. i).

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The birth of an image

The painting of a statue of Herakles and theories of

One of the most fascinating aspects of ancient Greek

My hope is that in the future this aspect of Greek

3. For current discussions of the viewer in scholarship on ancient

146 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011

Marconi: The birth of an image 147

Figure 2. Alternate view of figure 1.

representation of crafts are rare.5 Even more unique,

Journal of Archaeology 73 [1969]:423433; p. 425). In keeping

148 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011

hair and no beard, standing with his weight on the right

Figure 3. Herakles. Silver stater of Herakleia in Lucania. From

In his publication of the krater, von Bothmer took the

Marconi: The birth of an image 149

associating this representation with a series of statues,

Figure 4. Replica of the Albertini/Pitti Herakles type. Rome,

as suggested by the struts on the Roman replicas of the

150 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011

however, constitutes a more serious problem. The left

Figure 5. Close-up of figure 2.

works with the expression so-and-so painted it, but

Marconi: The birth of an image 151

Figure 6. Close-up of figure 2.

The painter in our scene is portrayed as a mature man

ways, which are reflective of two different ways of understanding the

alternative identification with a sculptor, first suggested

20. M. Cagiano De Azevedo, Bollettino dellIstituto centrale

152 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011

apprentice.26 However, as first pointed out by Robertson,

hanging between the gods watching mortals from

32. Cp. calyx krater, Berlin F 3297: Trendall and Cambitoglou

Marconi: The birth of an image 153

cannot represent the finishing of the statue of Herakles

Figure 7. Close-up of figure 2.

Figure 8. Close-up of figure 2.

154 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011

Figure 9. Close-up of figure 2.

an iconography that was rather popular, and not limited

Marconi: The birth of an image 155

same lines, Schmidt has written of Herakles as giving

On this vase one sees Apollo purifying Orestes by

156 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011

ancient Greek and Roman world was a component in

It should be pointed out that although on our vase

Marconi: The birth of an image 157

and art theorist Euphranor, who according to Pliny,

was not lame.68 This interest of fourth century artists in

158 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011

once we consider the long history of representations of

representations of this myth (fig. 12), between the second

1993), pp. 88129; O. Paoletti, Kassandra I, Lexicon Iconographicum

Marconi: The birth of an image 159

head from her.74 What is remarkable about this Homeric

74. Ibid., 6.311 (translation by R. Lattimore); A. Stewart, Greek

Figure 13. Rape of Kassandra. Athenian black-figure neck

in Greek vase painting.78 In addition, during the Late

160 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011

the Late Archaic iconography of the rape of Kassandra

and conspicuous in their dress and ornament for the

Marconi: The birth of an image 161

That this interpretation of the remark by Aischylos is