A World of Emotions: Ancient Greece 700 BC – 200 AD at the Onassis Cultural Center New York City

A World of Emotions: Ancient Greece 700 BC – 200 AD 

 

Onassis Cultural Center New York City

March 9 – June 24, 2017 

Reviewed by Ed Voves

"Know thyself." "Gnothi seauton" (γνῶθι σεαυτόν).  This maxim, inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Delphi, proclaims the philosophical aspirations of the ancient Greeks.
Intellectual exploration did not entirely define the lives of the Greeks - any more than it does the lives of modern-day individuals. A fascinating exhibition at the Onassis Cultural Center in New York City examines Greek civilization from a different vantage point: emotion. 
    
A World of Emotions: Ancient Greece 700 BC – 200 AD brings a wide-ranging array of works of art and artifacts to the mid-town Manhattan gallery of the Onassis Center. 

                Installation view of A World of Emotions: Ancient Greece, 700 BC – 200 AD       Photograph © Joseph Coscia, Jr.

Most of the exhibition objects are loans from Greek museums and chart the evolving attitudes of the ancient Greeks to the interplay of emotions. Other works come from Greek-speaking cities in southern Italy or are Roman-era copies of statues made by famous artists of the Greek past.

In a brilliant move, the curators of A World of Emotions created a grouping of statues as was often done in antiquity. The statue in the foreground, Pothos, is the daimone or spirit of yearning. Pothos is about to be hit by an arrow from the bow of Eros, the god of love.

Ed Voves Photo (2017), Roman-era Statues of Pothos (left) and Eros, 2nd century AD

This splendid representation of Eros is believed to be a copy, made about 70 years after Christ, of a bronze by the master sculptor, Lysippos who lived in fourth century BC. It was found at a different site in Rome than the place where Pothos was unearthed. Yet, the grouping of these two works is a masterful interpretation of the more playful aspects of emotion in the Greek world.

Emotion among the Greek, or Hellenes as they called themselves, was more often blood-chilling than heart-warming. Indeed, the most significant work in all of Greek literature begins with an evocation of unrestrained anger.

The first word of Homer's Iliad is menin, rage. This uncontrollable anger, the wraith of Achilles, resounded throughout antiquity. From Alexander the Great's heedless murder of his friend, Cleitus, who had saved his life in battle, to curse tablets which were commonly used in ancient vendettas, the Greeks often strayed from the path of reason.

Fortunately, Greek life and art was  balanced  by the practice of more positive traits and virtues.  Upon entering the A World of Emotions exhibit, visitors are greeted two marble statues from the sixth century B.C. known as Kourai. These two sculptures from the Archaic era preceding the Persian Wars exude emotional well-being.

Ed Voves Photo (2017), Gallery view of A World of Emotions

For me, it was like meeting old friends. Last autumn, I had seen the heroically nude kouros and the kore, with her dangling braids, at a spectacular exhibit at the National Geographic Museum in Washington D.C. I had visited The Greeks: Agamemnon to Alexander the Great too late in the exhibit's run to post a review. Yet, here were the kouros and kore to welcome me to A World of Emotions!

Greek sculpture was influenced by the statues which Greek merchants and mercenary soldiers saw in Egypt, beginning around 850 BC. The enigmatic smile of the kourai has counterparts in Egyptian sculpture and amazingly appears on statues at medieval cathedrals like Chartres in France and Magdeburg in Germany.

For the Greeks, the "Archaic" smile denotes self-awareness and a sense of connection with the gods. We can see a growing confidence on the face of this kouros, which dates to 510 to 500 BC, exactly the years when democracy in Athens was gaining political favor. By contrast, the great kouros in the Metropolitan Museum presents a more determined, yet more fearful, visage. The Met's kouros dates to 580 BC and was used as a monument for a young aristocrat's grave. That era, the early sixth century,was a time when ruthless oligarchic power and debt-slavery were ripping Athenian society apart. 

Statue of a Kouros, ca. 500 BC, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports,   

Photo by Kostas Xenikakis

By the time that this beaming, confident kouros was created, Greek democracy was on the rise.

Maybe I am just old-fashioned but I favor Archaic-era statues over the later Classical period. I especially love the fact that they were painted with garish colors, thereby confounding the theories of Age of Reason scholars who praised them for their "pure" natural color. Traces of dark red can easily be seen in the hair of the kore on view in the exhibition. The kore's necklace, bracelet and earrings were painted blue and a crown of gilded copper-alloy flowers once graced her head.

Placed on a pedestal on the Acropolis, the beautiful, decorative kore assumed the "proper" place for women ordained by the aggressively male society of ancient Greece. A women who ventured beyond the role of homemaker or hetaerae prostitute risked being viewed as a latter-day Medea, the mythological character who rebelled against male oppression and betrayal. 

Many of the most fascinating works of art in the exhibit relate to women, so often excluded from a political role or even an artistic career in Greek society. A brilliant fresco from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii illustrates depicts the Sacrifice of Iphigeneia. In this story from the Trojan War cycle. Agamemnon must sacrifice his beloved daughter, Iphigeneia, to placate the gods or his stalled armada will not be able to sail to attack Troy.

                              

Wall Painting with Scene from the Sacrifice of Iphigeneia, ca. 62 AD 

© Archeological Museum of Naples

Evidently, this outrageously unjust act was too much for even the Greeks to tolerate. Later versions of the story changed the ending, with the goddess Artemis bringing a deer to be slaughtered in place of the innocent Iphigeneia. This recalls the similar, happy, conclusion of the story of Abraham and Isaac in the Old Testament. 

It is doubtful that the change in the story of Iphigeneia was influenced by the Hebrew scriptures. More likely, it reflected the effect of the endless wars which plagued the Greek world. By the time that this fresco was painted in Pompeii, only a few short years before the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, peace had been imposed by the Romans. Most Greeks were glad of it. The reprieve of Iphigeneia, pictured here, is in keeping with the Pax Romana but not of the blood-thirsty spirit of the Greeks earlier in their history.

To mourn for those slain in warfare was in fact one of the few public roles of women in Greek society. They certainly had plenty of occasion to do so. 

Amphora with Mourning Scene, ca. 530 BC, © Vatican Museum  

The poignant and timeless image on this black-figure painted Amphora was painted around 530 BC. This was the era when Sparta gained military ascendancy over much of Greece. The woman mourning the dead warrior is most likely Eos, or Dawn, grabbing a hank of her hair as she grieves for her son, a victim of the wrathful Achilles at Troy. 

But separating mythology from human actions in Greek history is not always easy. The woman shown here might well have symbolized a mother from Argos convulsed in grief after the Spartan victory in the Battle of Champions in 546 BC. Or the scene could have occurred two centuries later following the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC when the armies of Athens and Thebes were decimated by King Philip of Macedon and his Achilles-like son, Alexander. There were lots of battles, plenty of sons to mourn.

The motivations that impelled the Greeks to engage in self-destructive wars and other (to us) irrational acts were actually based on a strict code of ethical conduct. The catalog to A World of Emotions has several compelling essays which provide crucial insights into the psychology and social factors that governed Greek behavior. Professor Angelos Chaniotis, the lead scholar of the curatorial team, summarizes these insights.  

A public life free of emotions has never existed, in any past society... As regards ancient Greece, certain features of Greek society and culture enhanced the part played by emotions in public life: the spirit of competition (agon) that characterized Greek culture, the importance of family and the duties connected with it - especially the duty to avenge an act of injustice or an insult against a relative or an ancestor - social values, such as an advanced sense of honor and shame, and the obligation to show gratitude for a favor and repay it (charis).

Along with place of emotion in public life, there was what another of the exhibit scholars, Anthi Dipla, calls the "private spaces of emotions." Here the differences between ancient and modern world views largely disappear. For in these personal, interior realms, care, concern and grief for spouses, children, soul mates, even pets were addressed. 

Greek parents often erected a statue to a child, happily saved from disease, to thank the gods for the young one's preservation. There is one of these in the exhibition, dating to the third century BC. The statue of a little boy holding a goose was dedicated in the sanctuary of the river god, Kephisos, in central Greece. 

Ed Voves Photo (2017), Statue of a Boy with a Goose, 3rd century BC (detail) 

Perhaps the boy was saved from drowning. Whatever the case, the ability with which the sculptor has captured the smiling boy's sense of well-being is little short of a miracle of art.

More often, parents would have to erect funeral stele with heartbroken inscriptions. A particularly poignant one is on view in World of Emotions, which records the devastated feelings of parents when their only daughter, named Zoe (the Greek word for life), died,while delivering a still-born baby around 200 AD.

Ed Voves Photo (2017), Gallery view showing steles of Kalliteles (left) and Polyeuktos

Not far from the monument to Zoe are other memorial steles, this time with sculpted depictions of deceased young boys. At the foot of each is a leaping, playful dog. I stood before these statues, of Kalliteles and Polyeuktos, and briefly lost track of time. I was still grappling with the impact of reading the translation of Zoe's memorial. Trying 

to focus on the historical and aesthetic details of these poignant monuments was difficult, if not impossible.

The emotions, the raw feelings displayed in the Onassis Center gallery, are what matter. 

It is with a lingering sense of shock that one realizes that these ancient emotions still resonate today. We observe the skillful ways that Greek artists evoked a feeling or depicted a sentiment. But such technical details are only a part of the World of Emotions exhibit.

What is really occurring at the Onassis Center, I believe, is a psychic or spiritual "event."  The emotions sculpted in marble or painted on clay have passed beyond the sphere of art criticism and have attained a form of immortality. This is what is displayed on the walls of the Onassis Center, ingrained into something harder and more lasting than stone.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Introductory Image:   

Head of Penthesilea Marble, Roman copy of a Hellenistic original. Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig, inv. no. BS 214 © Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig. Courtesy of Onassis Cultural Center, New York.

Installation view of A World of Emotions: Ancient Greece, 700 BC – 200 AD. Photograph © Joseph Coscia, Jr., 2017 Courtesy of Onassis Cultural Center, New York.

Ed Voves, Photo (2017),  Roman-era Statues of Pothos and Eros, 2^nd century AD. Exhibit at the Onassis Cultural Center, New York City, March 9 to June 24, 2017.

Ed Voves, Photo (2017),  Gallery View of the A World of Emotions Exhibit at the Onassis Cultural Center, New York City, March 9 to June 24, 2017.

Statue of a Kouros, Marble, ca. 500 BC, from the Sanctuary of Apollo at Ptoos. National Archaeological Museum, Athens, inv. no. 20 © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports–Archaeological Receipts Fund, Photography Kostas Xenikakis  Courtesy of Onassis Cultural Center, New York.

Painting with Scene from the Sacrifice of Iphigeneia Fresco on plaster, ca. 62 AD, from Pompeii. Casa del Poeta Tragico Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. no. 9112 © Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli / Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo Courtesy of Onassis Cultural Center, New York.

Amphora with Mourning Scene Terracotta, black-figure, ca. 530 BC, from Vulci. Musei Vaticani, inv. no. 16589, © Foto Musei Vaticani  Courtesy of Onassis Cultural Center, New York.

Ed Voves, Photo (2017), Statue of a Boy with a Goose, 3^rd Century BC (detail) from the collection of the National Archeological Museum, Athens. Exhibit at the Onassis Cultural Center, New York City, March 9 to June 24, 2017.

Ed Voves, Photo (2017), Gallery view of World of Emotion, showing steles of Kalliteles and Polyeuktos. Exhibit at the Onassis Cultural Center, New York City, March 9 to June 24, 2017.

Art Eyewitness Review: Why Homer Matters

Why Homer Matters

By Adam Nicolson

Henry Holt/320 Pages/$30

Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (September 22, 2014–January 4, 2015)    

Homer and the Epics Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Never underestimate Homer. The Iliad and The Odyssey have a curious habit of surprising us, taking us to places and thoughts we never imagined we would go. These epic poems possess a relevance to both contemporary events and the timeless challenges of life that is often uncanny. If a blind poet named Homer never existed, then somebody in antiquity possessed a degree of human empathy that has never been surpassed - and rarely equaled. 
                                                  
Adam Nicolson's new book, Why Homer Matters, directly addresses these issues. Nicolson cautions against definite claims that Homer lived. It is better, he maintains to think of Homer as a poetic tradition rather than as an inspired individual.

Homer, imagined likeness, late 1st century B.C. or 1st century A.D.

If there was a Homer, Nicolson reflects, then it was likely that he was "the man who joined, in the way of the poet, things that might otherwise have lived apart ..." These were the vast oral traditions of legends and stories about a great war in the Greek past and a terror-fraught voyage home afterward.

Nicolson's views demand respect. His grasp of Homer is based upon profound insight and an impressive command of academic scholarship. But it is Nicolson's life as a seafarer and globe traveler that gives his voice a commanding authority.

Two current art exhibitions impart a visual context to Why Homer Matters, thus reinforcing the impact of this fine book. Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (September 22, 2014–January 4, 2015) charts the age of "orientalization" that took place in Greece around the time that  Homer's epics were composed in written form, around 700 BC. Likewise, the newly opened Homer and the Epics Gallery at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts brilliantly complements Nicolson's book by showing how the later Greeks came to depict the Homeric tales in Classical art.

In the opening pages of Why Homer Matters, Nicolson looks at an amazing work of art from antiquity that is the closest "portrait" of Homer that we are likely to ever have.

In 1939, the great American archaeologist, Carl Blegen of the University of Cincinnati, began excavating Pylos in southern Greece. Pylos was the site of the palace of one of the Greek leaders in the Iliad, Nestor, and Blegen was not disappointed. Blegen's team discovered the first examples of Linear B, the earliest form of Greek script, found in Europe, and the remains of a stunning painting, The Lyre Player, amid the wreckage of Nestor's palace.       

  

                                                                                                                 

                                              

The Lyre Player, Late Bronze Age, from Pylos

The Lyre Player fresco was found shattered in pieces and later reconstructed by the artist Piet de Jong. This image of a Bronze Age poet with a bird taking wing is one of the most extraordinary representations of poetic expression in the history of art. As a symbol of the imagination in action, this scene, which decorated the throne room or megaron at Pylos, has few equals.

Pylos was one of the great palace-states of Mycenaean Greece. Around 1200 B.C., Pylos, Tiryns and Mycenae all were sacked and burned. The massive fortifications of these early Greek states collapsed before waves of attackers once identified as "Dorian" invaders. The conquering hordes may actually have included insurgent peasants and slaves once held in subjection by the Mycenaean warlords. These armor-clad nobles - Nestor, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Diomedes and the incomparable Achilles - were the protagonists of Homer's Iliad and other tales of the Trojan War which have not survived in written form.

According to tradition - which the Greek historian Thucydides accepted - the Mycenaean strongholds fell to assault eighty years after Troy was put to the sword. It was a well-deserved payback for the swaggering, blood-thirsty Greeks who had torched Troy.

That scenario may be a little too neat. Nicolson has an alternative theory that the Iliad may be traced to stories handed down from perhaps a thousand years earlier. Instead of one war against Troy, Nicolson maintains that the Iliad recalls adventures of the Indo-European ancestors of the Greeks as they migrated over the vast steppe lands of southern Russia and the Ukraine on the journey to their eventual homeland.

Nicolson brilliantly probes the origins of words used by Homer and the ancient Greeks. Thalassa, the word for sea in the Iliad and the Odyssey, is not of Indo-European origin. It is a loan word, possibly from Minoan Crete, whose script, Linear A still has not been deciphered.

The Greeks took verbal control of thalassa as they gained political dominion over the Aegean Sea and surrounding territories. But even after they became master mariners, the Greeks often used words or phrases in seafaring that referred to horses and wandering over the land. Poseidon, the god of the sea, was also the horse god who "climbed into his chariot and drove it across the waves."

Terracotta Chariot Krater, ca. 1375–1350 B.C.

A number of assaults or raids on Troy, between 1800 to 1200 B.C., may have been 
conflated in Greek memory to create the legend of a great Trojan War. Troy, the northernmost outpost of the great belt of civilized cities extending from Babylon and Assyria, was an inviting target for the Achaeans. But war begat war and the traditional date of Troy's fall, 1200 B.C., corresponds to the widespread collapse of Bronze Age centers such as Pylos.

When Greek art revived, it was very different from the elegance and beauty of Mycenaean palace art. The Lyre Player lay buried in the rubble of Pylos and a new artistic revolution was in the making.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art displays several monumental terracotta vases or kraters, used to hold the ashes of fallen warriors. These date to the 8th century B.C., from around the time that the text of the Iliad was being composed and the Greek city-states were being formed. 

Terracotta Krater, late 1st quarter of the 8th century B.C.

The crude, if vigorous, Geometric style of these kraters raises the fundamental question of how Greek art was able in a few short centuries to evolve the polished Classical elegance on display further on in the Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum and in the Boston Museum's Homer and the Epics Gallery.

An answer may be found in the link between an amazing work in the Homer and the Epics Gallery and a rather inconspicuous piece on loan from the British Museum to the Assyria to Iberia exhibit at the Met.

Two-handled Jar (amphora) with Achilles and Ajax, about 525–520 B.C.

The Two-handled Amphora from Boston shows Ajax and Achilles taking a break from fighting the Trojans. They are playing a board game, which were hugely popular in the Greek, Egyptian and Near-Eastern societies of the Bronze Age and later. This stunning work, dated to 525-520 B.C., shows the same scene on both sides, in Red Figure style by the Andokides Painter, in Black Figure by the Lysippides Painter. This type of transitional work is referred to as "bilingual” vase painting.

Game Box with Chariot Hunt,  Late Bronze Age, 1250–1100 B.C.

The game that Ajax and Achilles are playing likely came in an elaborately carved ivory container. Phoenician merchants exported luxury goods like this all over the Mediterranean basin. The hunting scene on the  ivory box reworks the vast bas reliefs from Nineveh of Assyrian kings slaughtering prey animals of all descriptions. This brought new levels of realism to Greek art as it turned from the Geometric style to representational art.

Elaborate pieces of metalwork also provided imagery for the growing Homeric cult. Supplied by the Phoenicians, these were often presented to religious shrines like Olympia and Delphi. This gilded silver bowl, found in an Etruscan tomb in Italy, is an example of such a presentation piece. It is decorated in a way that recalls Homer's description of the Shield of Achilles which was emblazoned with scenes of peace and war.

Bowl with Egyptianizing motifs, early 7th century B.C.

The splendid objects on display in the Assyria to Iberia exhibit show how artistic elements from foreign cultures, particularly from the Middle East, influenced the Greek view of their heroic, Homeric past. But for the Greeks at the turn of the 6th to the 5th centuries B.C., the dawn of the Classical Age, the scenes of peace and war that Homer placed on the shield of Achilles were far more than artistic motifs.

With the Persian Empire threatening Greece in 480 B.C., peace and war were issues of sheer survival. Homer's role in the Greek response to the looming Persian invasion raises perplexing questions. Why did the Iliad and the Odyssey assume a paramount status in Greek culture when these tales confirm almost all of the bad habits that bedeviled the Greeks as they tried to unify to resist Persian aggression?

Nicolson writes insightfully that the Homeric poems were a means to regard and understand the world, not serve as a code for ethical behavior like the Ten Commandments. Nicolson writes:

The Homeric view of the world is essentially traumatic and multiple...The claims of individual triumph can never be reconciled with the claims of communal love and society. We live in the great and eternal war between those principles, Timē and Aretē, honor and virtue, self and other.

Homer, Nicolson concludes "is the great voice of understanding, regarding us all, refusing to decide."

To a very significant degree, Homer's insights for the Greeks were like the Judeo-Christian code of free will. Right and wrong are clearly obvious in the Iliad. The heroes, Greek and Trojan, despite the occasional intervention of the gods, have the power to choose and they usually make very bad choices.

A particularly vivid illustration is on view at the Boston Homer and the Epics Gallery. A mixing bowl or calyx krater made in Athens about 470–460 B.C. shows scenes from the fall of Troy. When stretched out, the dramatic Red Figure depictions by the Altamura Painter represent a virtual panorama of human virtue and vice, heroism and depravity. 

Mixing bowl (calyx krater) with scenes from the fall of Troy, about 470–460 B.C.

Here we see the tragic King Priam watching as his daughter Cassandra is dragged naked to the Greek ships. Priam is about to be killed as his tiny grandson is bludgeoned to death. On the other side of the krater, a heroic Trojan warrior unsheathes his sword to fight a rear-guard action enabling Aeneas to carry his aged father to safety.

The Altamura krater was made in Athens ten years after the Persian invasion was repulsed. The poignancy of the scenes may reflect the suffering to which the Greek people were briefly exposed before the victories of Salamis and Plataea prevented a repetition of such horrors on a wide scale. Yet, the Athenians themselves were to visit this terrible fate on fellow Greeks on the island of Melos in 415 B.C. because they favored Athens' enemy, Sparta.

Everyone involved in this infamous episode was well-acquainted with Homer. Yet the men and boys of Melos were slaughtered and the women and girls were enslaved. This deed was committed by the troops of democratic, enlightened Athens.

If Homer's influence was unavailing on Melos in 415 B.C., can we really concur with Nicolson that the Iliad and Odyssey still matter today?

Today, as the nations of the world still plot and maneuver for dominance, these questions are pressing ones. Seen in this light, we cannot but agree with Adam Nicolson that properly understood, Homer imparts "the ability to regard all aspects of life with clarity, equanimity and sympathy, with a loving heart and an unclouded eye."

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Special thanks to:

Ms. Carol Hershenson, Curator, Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati
Dr. Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, Archivist, American School of Classical Studies at Athens

Images Courtesy of the Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA.

Introductory Image: Why Homer Matters, 2014 (cover) Image credit: Henry Holt and Co.

Homer, Marble (probably from Mt. Pentelikon near Athens) Height: 41cm (16 1/8 in.); length (of face): 21 cm ( 8 1/4 in.), late 1st century B.C. or 1st century A.D.  Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (04.13)  Image: © The  Museum of Arts, Boston

The Lyre Player, Fresco from Late Bronze Age, excavated by Dr. Carl Blegen and recreated in watercolor by Piet de Jong.  Presented as Plate 126 43H6 in The Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Western Messenia II: The Frescoes by Mabel L. Lang, 1969. Courtesy of The Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati.

Terracotta Chariot Krater, Terracotta, H. 14 7/16 in. (36.7 cm) diameter 10 11/16 in. (27.2 cm), Late Helladic IIIA:1, ca. 1375–1350 B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art,  The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76, (74.51.964) Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Terracotta Krater, attributed to the Workshop of New York MMA 34.11.2, Terracotta,  H. 39 in. (99.1 cm) diameter 37 in. (94 cm), Geometric, late 1st quarter of the 8th century B.C., Attic, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,  Fletcher Fund, 1934 (34.11.2) Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Two-handled Jar (amphora) with Achilles and Ajax, attributed to the the Andokides Painter, the Lysippides Painter, Ceramic, Height: 55.5 cm (21 7/8 in.); diameter: 34 cm (13 3/8 in.) Archaic- Red and Black Figure (Bilingual), about 525–520 B.C. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, (01.8037)  Image: © The  Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Game Box with Chariot Hunt, Ivory, Enkomi, Chamber Tomb 58, Late Bronze Age, 1250–1100 B.C., The Trustees of the British Museum, London, Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum

Bowl with Egyptianizing motifs,  Gilded silver, Praeneste, Colombella necropolis, Bernardini Tomb Phoenician or Orientalizing, early 7th century B.C. Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia, Rome Image: Bruce White

Mixing bowl (calyx krater) with scenes from the fall of Troy, attributed to the Altamura Painter, Ceramic, Red Figure, Height: 48 cm (18 7/8 in.); diameter: 49 cm (19 5/16 in.) from Athens, about 470–460 B.C. Museum of Arts, Boston (59.178)  Image: © The  Museum of Arts, Boston