On view
Oinochoe (jug) depicting Herakles liberating Prometheus,
ca. 330–320 BCE
This jug depicts the hero Herakles liberating Prometheus, who stands chained to a rock. An eagle sent by Zeus to tear at Prometheus’s liver flies toward an altar to his right, as punishment for stealing fire from the Olympian gods for humankind. His wound is gruesomely indicated through the addition of yellow and red pigment. Prometheus gestures toward his savior, Herakles, who approaches from the left holding his characteristic club and lionskin. In the center of the scene, the half-goat god Pan holds out a drinking cup to Herakles. While the subject matter on this vase is foundational within Greek myth, it is rarely depicted in the visual material that survives from mainland Greece. Its use here, on a vase made by and for an Apulian population, hints at the creative repurposing of shape, decoration, and function that occurred within the southern Italian ceramic production.
Information
ca. 330–320 BCE
Europe, Italy, Apulia, Southern Italy
- John Boardman, et. al., Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae (LIMC), (Zürich: Artemis Verlag, 1981-2009)., Vol. 1: p. 25, Acheloos 216
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1989," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 49, no. 1 (1990): p. 24-57., p. 33
- A.D. Trendall and Alexander Cambitoglou, Second supplement to the red-figured vases of Apulia, (London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies, 1991-1992)., Vol. 2: p. 224; pl. 57; cat. no. 878b
- Dyfri Williams, "Prometheus bound and unbound: between art and drama", in Donna Kurtz, ed., Essays in classical archaeology for Eleni Hatzivassiliou, 1977-2007, (Oxford, UK: Archaeopress / John and Erica Hedges Ltd., 2008). , p. 182, 190; fig. 2.
