Amphora In Greek Art

The precursor and codifier of Western culture as we know it today, the civilization of the Greek city-sates of the Peloponnese peninsula is renowned for its many pioneering works of art and architecture. From the Doryphoros to the famed Parthenon of Athens, the legacy that the ancient Greek civilization has left to Western culture and the world as a whole cannot be underestimated. Of particular interest are two pieces of art from an age before Alexander: a black-figure panel amphora made in the sixth century BCE, and a funerary relief figure of a young man carved circa fourth century BCE. A closer look at the seemingly more unobtrusive details such as the iconography, purpose, style, and even historical positions of these two works reveals
Detailing an event of Greek mythology, this amphora depicts a battle from the Trojan War, a conflict between the Greek attackers and the citizens of the city of Troy that was the subject of Homer’s Iliad, one of the two great epics of Greek and Roman mythology. Shown on the front of the vase were Achilles, the son of the sea nymph Thetis, and a Greek warrior “in combat with Memnon [son of Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn] an African prince fighting on the side of Troy” (Bromberg, Guide, page 64). They are fighting over the corpse of Achilles’ comrade Antilochus, as told in the Iliad, while their divine mothers watch. According to the myth, Memnon of Ethiopia killed Antilochus, and respected the old age of Nestor, the father of Antilochus, to fight him. So Nestor begged Achilles to avenge his comrade, and the greatest warrior of the Greeks obliged. As Hector, the greatest Trojan warrior, was already killed by Achilles at this stage of the war, Memnon was the only Trojan who had any hope of victory. The scene is of the very moment where Achilles gains the upper hand in their duel and is just about to stab his spear through Memnon’s heart, thus ending the life of the last of the great Trojan warriors. The back of the amphora also seems to depict a scene from the Trojan War, but not enough of the other side of the frontal plane was revealed to guess what the scene might
As black-figure pottery was one of the earliest types of Greek art, this amphora is one of the most archaic examples of Greek culture. Fittingly, the era in Greek history that the amphora was made in, at least in terms of art, is in fact known as the Archaic Art Era. During the period between 600 BCE and 480 BCE, the black-figure form began to be replaced by a new form called red-figure form, pioneered by an artist known only as the Andokides Painter, himself the student of “the acknowledged master of the black-figured technique” (Kleiner 100), Exekias. The fundamental difference between these two forms was that black-figure art was made by drawing and filling in the silhouettes with a dark pigment and then commencing the firing process with the red clay as the background. In red-figure art, “the painter outlined the figures and then colored the background black. The artist reserved the red clay for the figures themselves” (Kleiner page 101). But figured pottery was not the only invention of the Greeks in this time period. The Archaic era was also known for “producing the first life sized stone statues [that appeared] in Greece” (Kleiner page 41), the early precursors of the other piece of art, the marble funerary relief of a young