Etrusco Alfarería Ánfora de cuello funerario con quimera y achlae del pintor Micali. Siglo V a.C. 35cm Alto.

Funerary Neck Amphora with Chimera and Achlae by the Micali Painter.

Etruscan, 5th century BC.

Pottery.

Height 35 cm

Condition: Restored from original fragments. The left handle is reconstructed.

Provenance: Private collection of Peter Tillou, Litchfield, USA.

Documents: Provided of export license issued by the Ministry of Culture of Spain and Thermoluminiscence test.

Description:

Amphora with an ovoid body, narrow base and wide shoulders, raised on a low, circular and stepped foot based on mouldings. The neck is high, wide and fitted, ending in a flared mouth. The straps, in the form of a ribbed ribbon, start from the upper part of the neck and rest on the shoulders.

The amphora is a typology originating in Greek pottery with a fusiform profile, with a narrow neck and two open handles on its sides. It was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans as the main means of transportation and storage for grapes, olives, olive oil, cereals, fish, wine and other basic products. It also had symbolic uses –it was the prize of the games in honor of Athena–, and during the Roman period its funerary use was also frequent, as a Vessel for the ashes of the deceased, these cremation urns usually being richly decorated objects. The average volume of an amphora was close to 25-30 liters (one cubic foot); its weight and content, in an amphora filled with water, gave rise to talent, a measure of weight and also a monetary unit. Some of the Greek amphorae, such as the famous Panathenaic amphorae or the one studied here, had more or less rich pictorial decorations. The Roman ones, on the other hand, used to be simple, given that due to the expansion of trade, the use of the amphora was focused on the transport and storage of food and lost its symbolic character.

The vase is decorated using the black-figure technique, with large figures of animals arranged in two bands that occupy most of the vessel. In a style inherited from the Micali Painter, active in Vulci at the end of the 6th century BC, the motifs are painted with a light varnish, as if it were a glaze, and the details are made using sgraffito. These wide strips appear separated by groups of parallel lines, which structure the compositional space. The neck, the handles, the base of the belly and the foot are covered by black varnish, without secondary ornamental elements. The animals of the main band are arranged in the form of a continuous frieze, without interruptions; they all appear in profile to the left, followed by each other in a continuous scene.

This wider band houses a chimera on its front face: the body of a lioness, with five clearly represented breasts, a protome of a goat emerging from its back, and the tail of a serpent. The chimera appears in a jumping position, with its jaws open and its mane bristling, its rear claws still resting on the ground and its front legs in the air, extended in parallel. If the piece is turned to the viewer's left, a mermaid (body of a bird and head of a woman) with outstretched wings appears in front of the chimera and below one of the handles. Continuing with the turn, we reach the decoration on the obverse of the amphora, which in this lower register houses a lion in a position very similar to that of the chimera on the opposite side. Finally, under the second handle stands a lioness, with the same fierce gesture of open jaws and waving mane, with six breasts in this case.

The upper register, somewhat narrower and occupying the shoulders of the amphora, houses the same figure on its two fronts: a bull with a bearded human face, in a resting position, with its right front leg stretched out to the front and the another folded under the body. The tail appears between the hind legs, which fold inwards. In front of the face of each of the bulls there is a floral motif in the shape of a lance, representing an ivy leaf.

Since it is a funerary vessel, these animal friezes would be the symbolic representation of concepts related to death and the afterlife. It must be borne in mind that, since lions never existed in the Italian Peninsula, they belonged in Etruscan art to the mythical world, just like sirens, chimeras and bulls with human faces. Wild beasts, and especially those of a hybrid nature, had an apotropaic meaning in Etruria, of protection against evil, and were directly related to death and the passage between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Throughout hundreds of years, representations of sphinxes, sirens, chimeras and other hybrid beings appear in all kinds of Etruscan funerary contexts with this protective meaning. The presence of the lioness would have the same meaning, although her swollen breasts have also been interpreted as a symbol of fertility and rebirth. Everything in the glass under study alludes to the world beyond, even the representation of ivy, which is related to transformation, change and rebirth.

The figure of the bull with a bearded human face represents Achlae, the Greek Achelous, a river god whose representation is frequent in Etruscan funerary iconography, both in painting and in ceramics and sculpture. In her thesis on the funerary iconography of Tarquinia, Allison Jean Weir points out that the representation of Achlae has a double symbolism in the Etruscan funerary context. On the one hand, as a hybrid being, it is suitable to appear in a tomb, a space that belongs neither to the world of the living nor to the world of the dead, a place of passage and a threshold where the transformation between the living and the dead takes place. On the other hand, being a river god, he would also allude to perpetual movement, to transition. In fact, the Etruscan way to the other world was by boat, across the water.

The technique of black figures, based on the use of a transparent varnish that, when fired, acquired an intense and brilliant black hue. Therefore, the motifs were invisible before firing, due to which the painters had to work entirely from memory, without being able to see their previous work. Once the piece was fired, the areas not covered by the varnish remained with the reddish tone of the clay, while the glazed ones, the "painted" ones, took on a dense and shiny black color. The black-figure technique was introduced in Corinth around 700 BC, being adopted by Attic artists in the Orientalizing period (725-625 BC). Then the great series of black-figure ceramics began, which had its main center in Athens and lasted until the beginning of the 5th century BC.

The technique of black figures spread outside Greece from the 6th century BC, through the export of Attic vases. In Etruria there are examples from the first half of that century, made by Greek artists settled in the area. The Etruscan black-figure style will disappear in the middle of the 5th century, when the new language of red figures prevails. Although in general Etruscan black-figure pottery will depend heavily on Attic models, small groups of vases have been found that show a marked personality. Etruscan black-figure pottery has traditionally been seen as a cheap substitute for Attic pottery, but in reality it was more likely a complement to it: it provided local forms and iconography that could not be found on imported pottery. The neck amphora was, in fact, the most frequent typology within Etruscan black-figure pottery, possibly because of its resemblance to the ancient forms of impasto-type cinerary urns. Other Greek typologies, such as the kylix, were replaced by local forms that responded to the same use. Likewise, the Etruscan vessels served as a symbol of identity in a colonial context, in addition to responding to a concept of funerary trousseau different from the Greek. Among the Etruscans, the vessels buried next to the deceased often had decorations that directly alluded to the deceased, or represented the afterlife according to the conception of the deceased's family – we must not forget that, within the Etruscan world, the conception of the Death was intimately linked to the concept of family, of clan. In Greece, on the other hand, the most frequent were the reflection of the idea of ​​death as marriage or violent abduction. In his study of the matter, Dimitris Paleothodoros points out that, as a general rule, the Etruscan painted vases of the archaic period belonged to the realm of the dead, even if they had not been made specifically to form part of a grave goods.

Bibliography
- BARTOLOLI, G; SPRENGER, M. The Etruscans: Their History, Art, and Architecture. H. N. Abrams. 1983.
- CACCIONI, D. A. The Villanovan, Etruscan, and Hellenistic Collections in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Brill. 2009.
- BEAZLEY, J. D. Etruscan Vase-Painting. Clarendon Press. 1947.
- BRENDEL, O. Etruscan Art. Yale University Press. 1995.
- Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Paris: Union Académique Internationale, www.cvaonline.org
- DE PUMA, R. Etruscan and Villanovan Pottery. University of Iowa Museum of Art. 1971.
- GINGE, B. Ceramiche etrusche a figure nere. Materiali del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Tarquinia, XII. 1987.
- HAYNES, S. Etruscan Civilizaton: A Cultural History. J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005.
- IZZET, V. The Archaeology of Etruscan Society. Cambridge University Press. 2008.
- MCINTOSH TURFA, J. The Etruscan World. Routledge. 2018.
- PALEOTHODOROS, D. “Etruscan Black-figure in Context” en Bollettino di Archeologia On Line 1, 1-11. 2010.
- SPIVEY, N. Etruscan Art. Thames & Hudson. 1997.
- WEIR, A. J. Footsteps of the Dead: Iconography of Beliefs about the Afterlife and Evidence for Funerary Practices in Etruscan Tarquinia. Tesis doctoral. University of St. Andrews. 2013.

PARALELOS:

Fig. 1 Detalle de los hombros de un ánfora con esfinges del Pintor de Micali. Etrusca, Vulci, finales del s. VI a.C. Detroit Institute of Arts, Estados Unidos, inv. 27.281.

Fig. 2 Ánfora con caballos alados y sirena atribuida al Pintor de Micali. Etrusca, h. 525-500 a.C. Metropolitan Museum, New York, inv. 96.9.177a, b.

Fig. 3 Ánfora con sirenas atribuida al Pintor de Micali. Etrusca, Vulci, h. 520-500 a.C. British Museum, Londres, inv. 1938,0318.1.

Fig. 4 Ánfora de cuatro asas. Etrusco-corintia, h. 675-650 a.C. Metropolitan Museum, New York, inv. 2001.761.8.

Fig. 5 Ánfora con sirenas y águila atribuida al Pintor de Micali. Etrusca, h. 525-500 a.C. Metropolitan Museum, New York, inv. 06.1021.40.

Fig. 6 Olpe de figuras negras del Pintor de Pescia Romana. Etrusco, 520-500 a.C. Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid, 1999/99/37.

Fig. 7 Oinochoe de bronce con quimera. Etrusca, finales del s. V a.C. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. Br 2782. Detalle del asa.

Fig. 8 Plato de figuras rojas con quimera. Apulia, Magna Grecia, finales del s. IV a.C. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. Cp 1358.


Notes:

- The piece includes authenticity certificate.
- The piece includes Spanish Export License (Passport for European Union) - If the piece is destined outside the European Union a substitution of the export permit should be requested, can take between 1-2 weeks maximum.
- The seller guarantees that he acquired this piece according to all national and international laws related to the ownership of cultural property. Provenance statement seen by Catawiki.

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