Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2007)
JÁNOS GYÖRGY SZILÁGYI: A Boar Hunt
A BOAR HUNT JÁNOS GYÖRGY SZILÁGYI In 1948, in the course of an exchange with the Museum of Applied Art, the Antiquities Collection of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts acquired a figure vase of unknown provenance. The inventory number is 50.493; current height: 16.3 cm. The front side of the vase represents a hunter mounted on a galloping horse with a boar fleeing to the right beneath the legs of the horse (tig. 1). The hunter wears a chiton reaching to the knee, above it a corslet of linen or leather with two rows of flaps (pteruges) beneath to protect the thighs and midriff; above the upper, shorter row a belt of bronze (?) rings; on his feet long hunting boots (embas, cothurnus venaticus); above the corselet, a chlamys held together by a round brooch fixed round his back and sides in such a way as to leave both arms free: the left edge can be seen thrown across the back of the horse. 1 The upper body of the rider is shown almost frontally; his left hand, with which he holds the reins, rests on the neck of the horse; he clearly once held a hunting spear in his raised right hand. The horse's head is turned slightly towards the viewer; otherwise, both the horse and the boar are shown in profile. There are no figures on the back of the vase: it is smoothed down by hand and almost completely flat, with the neck and mouth of the bottle jutting out of the middle (fig. 2.). The hair on the body of the boar is marked by narrow incised lines, and that of the horse's mane by hatching. The rider's head is missing along with the front part of the horse's head, its ears, the two front legs and tail, most of the boar's head, the top of the neck with the spout and the vertical strap handle, as well as the base that closes off the bottle from the bottom. The relief decoration on the front of the base was mould-made. The joint of the two halves, and the join of the boar (added later) with the body of the vase were smoothed over with a thin layer of clay, but the crack on the top part of the boar shows that it was separately made.
