Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2007)

JÁNOS GYÖRGY SZILÁGYI: A Boar Hunt

scene. The Budapest vase, which is thus unique among figure vases for its subject, can be dated for its style and technique from the last quarter of the fourth century and the first quarter ot the third (the earlier custom of decorating the back of figure vases with red figure palmettes came to an end in the mid-fourth century BC]; while figure vases disappeared entirely for an extended period in the early third century).

11 The place of production is no less a mystery: examination of the iconographie type of the composition and the possible functions of the vase can lead only to a hypothetical solution. For the former there is a wealth of artistic and even literary sources to exploit. As early as the fifth century BC the iconographie type of the mounted hunter in Greek art (the Budapest vase is certainly Greek) adhered to certain rules: a pictorial canon so strict and so long-lasting that the description of a rider in the Cynegetica ("On Hunting with Dogs"), an anonymous didactic poem of the third century AD attributed falsely to Oppian, fits the composition of the Budapest vase point by point, and even lends assistance in reconstructing the missing parts: "...with his left hand the mounted hunter should guide the bridle that steers his horse. Let him wear a tunic well-girt and fastened above the knee and held tight by crossing straps. Again on either side of his neck let his mantle be flung back over his strong shoulders to hang away from his hands for easy toil"

12 The only details missing in the poem are the brooch that holds the cloak together at the rider's throat, and the leather corselet and hunting-boots he wears. As a great series of parallels, most of them stone reliefs, attests, the hunter had the face of a youth, looked toward the viewer, and held a hunting spear in his raised right arm. The surviving part of the vase shows clearly that the head was not attached in relief to the neck of the vase, but was formed in the round. The figure of the hunting rider appears early in the art of Mesopotamia and Egypt. The iconographie type of the hunter on a galloping horse almost certainly originated in Assyria, and GRAVE STELE WITH "TI IR AC I AN RIDER BUDAPEST. MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS