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Online Activities: Black-glazed Cup
This drinking cup in the Princeton University Art Museum is of a type produced in Athens during the third quarter of the fifth century B.C. Most of the cup, which has relief ribbing on its lower body, is coated with black clay slip, a common type of non-figural decoration.
Surprisingly, however, the underside of the cup is decorated with an unfinished image of a mounted Amazon, partially executed in the red-figure technique. Its placement here is unexpected, and it may be that a red-figure artist in the workshop where the cup was produced used the flat surface of the cup's base to sketch a design that would later be employed on another vessel.
The Amazon, a mythical female warrior, is astride a horse and carrying a pair of spears. She is identified as an Amazon by her beardless face and swelling breasts as well as by her apparel, which includes ankle-length trousers and a belted tunic with long sleeves, garments associated with the non-Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, in the distant reaches of which the Amazons were thought to dwell. Additionally, the Amazon wears a mitra, a headdress of eastern origin resembling a turban, whose cloth flaps hang down the sides and back.
Because the image on the cup is unfinished, we can see more clearly certain stages in its execution. In a red-figure vase-painting, the artist paints not with pigments but with a refined clay slip, a liquid that is thick in consistency, rather like honey. This is applied directly to the surface of the vessel, whose red color results from the presence of iron in the clay. In the case of this cup, the red hue has been given a pinkish cast by the application of a wash of ocher, which, like the clay of the vessel, is rich in ferric oxide. The artist began by sketching the design with a thin piece of lead or charcoal.
[There is a] gray sketch [that] burned away in the kiln but left a shallow impression in the clay, now most visible in the head and forelegs of the horse, which were not subsequently covered. Such sketch lines sometimes indicate that the artist altered the original design in the final execution of the painting, although that seems not to have happened in this case.
Except for the hands and feet, which were only sketched, most of the Amazon's body is outlined with thin black lines, as are the upper and rear portions of the horse, with partial indications of its tail and one of its hind legs. These black lines are called relief lines because (under magnification) it is clear that they stand slightly in relief on the clay surface. To make a relief line, the artist employed a very thin brush‚—just a few strands‚—that was laid down on the surface and then raised upward; sometimes a distinct groove is visible down the center of the line. Relief lines also were employed for the spears carried by the Amazon and for the two sets of parallel lines at the bottom, which in a finished work would have formed the ground line of the scene, perhaps framing additional ornament.
Of all the elements of the picture, only the head of the Amazon is completely finished in the red-figure technique. Her face and mitra were contoured with relief lines, around which her entire head was again bordered with a wider band of thick black slip, the so-called eighth-inch band. The purpose of this carefully applied feature was to form a buffer protecting the figure from mistakes that could be made when filling in the background with black slip. Although the eighth-inch band stands slightly in relief in comparison to the background, it is much broader than a relief line and was applied with a larger brush that could be dragged across the surface in the ordinary way.
Here the painter stopped, apparently content with having worked out whatever design questions motivated him to produce this unfinished image. The cup was then fired in the kiln, preserving the sketch.
Surprisingly, however, the underside of the cup is decorated with an unfinished image of a mounted Amazon, partially executed in the red-figure technique. Its placement here is unexpected, and it may be that a red-figure artist in the workshop where the cup was produced used the flat surface of the cup's base to sketch a design that would later be employed on another vessel.
The Amazon, a mythical female warrior, is astride a horse and carrying a pair of spears. She is identified as an Amazon by her beardless face and swelling breasts as well as by her apparel, which includes ankle-length trousers and a belted tunic with long sleeves, garments associated with the non-Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, in the distant reaches of which the Amazons were thought to dwell. Additionally, the Amazon wears a mitra, a headdress of eastern origin resembling a turban, whose cloth flaps hang down the sides and back.
Because the image on the cup is unfinished, we can see more clearly certain stages in its execution. In a red-figure vase-painting, the artist paints not with pigments but with a refined clay slip, a liquid that is thick in consistency, rather like honey. This is applied directly to the surface of the vessel, whose red color results from the presence of iron in the clay. In the case of this cup, the red hue has been given a pinkish cast by the application of a wash of ocher, which, like the clay of the vessel, is rich in ferric oxide. The artist began by sketching the design with a thin piece of lead or charcoal.
[There is a] gray sketch [that] burned away in the kiln but left a shallow impression in the clay, now most visible in the head and forelegs of the horse, which were not subsequently covered. Such sketch lines sometimes indicate that the artist altered the original design in the final execution of the painting, although that seems not to have happened in this case.
Except for the hands and feet, which were only sketched, most of the Amazon's body is outlined with thin black lines, as are the upper and rear portions of the horse, with partial indications of its tail and one of its hind legs. These black lines are called relief lines because (under magnification) it is clear that they stand slightly in relief on the clay surface. To make a relief line, the artist employed a very thin brush‚—just a few strands‚—that was laid down on the surface and then raised upward; sometimes a distinct groove is visible down the center of the line. Relief lines also were employed for the spears carried by the Amazon and for the two sets of parallel lines at the bottom, which in a finished work would have formed the ground line of the scene, perhaps framing additional ornament.
Of all the elements of the picture, only the head of the Amazon is completely finished in the red-figure technique. Her face and mitra were contoured with relief lines, around which her entire head was again bordered with a wider band of thick black slip, the so-called eighth-inch band. The purpose of this carefully applied feature was to form a buffer protecting the figure from mistakes that could be made when filling in the background with black slip. Although the eighth-inch band stands slightly in relief in comparison to the background, it is much broader than a relief line and was applied with a larger brush that could be dragged across the surface in the ordinary way.
Here the painter stopped, apparently content with having worked out whatever design questions motivated him to produce this unfinished image. The cup was then fired in the kiln, preserving the sketch.
