Radocsay Dénes - Gerevich Lászlóné szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 31. (Budapest,1968)

BOTHMER, DIETRICH von: An Amphora'by Exekias

12/b Amphora by Exekias, obverse. Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts the neck-amphorae in Dublin (mentioned above, as a newcomer) and in New York.

15 Her synchronisms are borne out by such details as the white pole horse, which occurs twice on the amphorae in Orvieto

16 and on the neck-amphora in New York,

1 ' by the raised front leg of the right trace-horse, the treatment of the manes, and other features. For the decoration of the reverse (Fig. 13/a/b) Exekias has chosen a subject that, while common in the stylistic group of black-figure in which he grew up, was used by him with great restraint: Dionysos and his followers. In this panel Dionysos stands in the centre, facing right. In his left hand he holds a kantharos; in his right a big sprig of ivy. Behind him is one maenad, and facing him is another who cradles a snake in the crook of her right arm, followed by two satyrs marching in step. One of them has raised both hands and faces the onlooker. Frontal faces are not very common in Attic black-figure, and among the preserved works by Exekias there is only one other frontal face, a bearded man in a funerary procession on a fragmentary plaque in Berlin.

38 Normally figures with their heads in front view carry heavy burdens, as Dionysos on the François vase,

39 but here the frontal satyr is no porter, and the frontality of his face is used for comic effects, as with the frontal satyrs on the Lydos krater in New York,

20 of whom the one directly behind Hephaistos raises his arms in a gesture very close to the one on the Budapest amphora. 15 ABV p. 144, no. 3. 16 ABV p. 144—145, nos. 10—11. 17 ABV p. 144, no. 3. 18 1818; ABV p. 146, no. 23. 19 ABV p. 76, no. 1. 20 ABV p. 108, no. 5.