Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 92-93.(Budapest, 2000)
SZILÁGYI, JÁNOS GYÖRGY: "Les Adieux". A Column-krater of the Syracuse Painter
woman holding her raised right hand forward on two of his hydriai (35, 36). The lefthand komast on side B of the Budapest vase appears as a solitary figure, with different attributes and hand-gestures, on the reverse of the krater in Rome (11); the scheme of the central panel of side A, somewhat modified and characterized with the attributes of Poseidon and Nike, recurs on the New York amphora of the painter (16). The detail most often repeated on his vases is a bearded male head shown in profile, often looking back; though lacking any really individual traits, it is a returning motif through the whole of the painter's known career. In his compositions of two, three, or four figures depending on the shape of the pot, he usually follows the typical solutions of the period; the majority of his themes and his methods of composition are among the most conventional in the vase-painting of the Early Classical period in Athens. He rarely depicts mythological scenes or gods: Dionysos and his followers for the most part, as befits the purpose of the pots; Zeus rarely (44), Hermes at times (2, 55), Apollo (35), Poseidon (16, 33), Eos and Tithonos (17,41), usually in widely accepted schemes. His other pictures are most often scenes defined or suggested by the shape and/or function of the vases (Dionysiac figures and komasts on his kraters, mourners on his loutrophoroi, of which I was unable to study the unpublished fragments) or nameless male and female figures. The Syracuse Painter did, however, have his moments as a draughtsman when he rose above the level of mediocrity either in his choice of subject matter, or composition, or both. One such high-point of his oeuvre is the psychostasia on side A of the Boston stamnos (1) or what remains of the scene of wine-harvesting satyrs on his Paris krater (4); side B of the krater found in Bomarzo, which shows Herakles and Alkyoneus, whom Pallas Athena has put to sleep (3); the satyr carrying maenad on the krater of the Villa Giulia (11); and the hydria with Heracles in the act of stealing the Golden Apples in the Garden of the Hesperides (35bis). Aside from these, a few other works of the painter are distinguished by the ethos of the scene, by the way it grasps a significant moment of human or divine existence and places it in an atmosphere expressive of an inevitability grounded in the order of the cosmos. If these pictures do not surpass the mediocre qualities of the master in their artistic execution, it cannot be denied that they were created in the spirit of Aeschylean tragedy or the Mourning Athena in the Acropolis Museum. Among these pieces stands the loutrophoros now in Copenhagen (21), the hydria with the libation-scene of Apollo and Artemis (35), and, together with these, the obverse of the Budapest krater. The iconographie reading of the scene is not difficult: the farewell of a hoplite leaving home, or, more closely: the preparations for the last libation offered to the gods before departure - hence the phiale full of wine in the woman's hand. Warriors' departures became a favourite subject of Attic vase-painters from the first decades of the sixth century. 18 On large black-figure pots the warrior usually departs in a four-horse chariot, surrounded by his family and others. 19 At the end of the 6th century this scheme is almost completely supplanted in early red-figure vase painting by another, prevalent 18 The first exhaustive list of representations: Stephani. L., CR St.-Pétersbourg 1873, 109-244. For more recent literature, see the following notes. 19 The basic account of the scene is Wrede, W., Kriegers Ausfahrt in der archaisch-griechischen Kunst, AM 41 (1916, publ. 1928), 221-374 (touches also upon archaic representations from outside Athens).
