Phoenix Ancient Art S.A.

A kylix is a wine-cup with a broad, shallow bowl and two horizontal handles that slant slightly upward from the sides of the cup. This example has a trumpet shaped foot that forms a continuous profile with the bowl. The kylix is covered with black slip on the exterior, with only areas near the handles and interiors of the handles themselves reserved in the reddish color of the clay. The figural scene on the interior of the cup, set within a circular tondo, is framed by an ornamental band consisting of stopt, paired maeanders facing right, and separated by a cross-in-square design.

Within the tondo, wearing a himation draped over his shoulder and leaning on a long staff, the central figure, a music teacher, stands holding in his right hand a lyre with a sound box made from a tortoise shell, a chelys (“tortoise”)-lyra. In his left hand he holds a double flute, auloi. At the lower right is the teacher’s stool, diphros, upon which is a cushion decorated with a zig-zag pattern. The teacher seems distraught with the young student who sits dejectedly on a small, box-shaped stool. In this scene, perhaps the boy has angered his instructor by being ill-prepared or off key; if so, the Brygos Painter provides us with a believable scenario from everyday life -- the music lesson “gone wrong.” The teacher appears to brandish the auloi in front of the boy, holding them over his head. The boy, who holds a writing case in his right hand, raises his left hand, as though in self-defense. The flute case, sybene, represented as a long, rectangular shape, hangs in the background to the left of the teacher.

In ancient Greece, the lyre, one of the simplest and perhaps most important of all Greek stringed instruments, was an essential accompaniment for the recitation of poetry, following the Athenian custom of singing poetry to music. A music lesson including the lyra was part of early training that any well-bred Athenian youth would be familiar with, and it is abundantly illustrated in Greek vase painting (see no.XX, a kylix by the Epidromos Painter). The chelys-lyra seems to be especially associated with youths and young men, since it was the chief instrument they were taught to play and expected to master. By the Hellenistic period the term “lyric poetry” is used to describe a category of sung (as opposed to recited) poetry combined with music. The aulos is the instrument most commonly associated with the lyra and is depicted with it in vase painting both in mythological contexts and scenes of everyday life. They are rarely seen played together, and then only occasionally in scenes of procession. The fact that musical competence was expected among the educated class is also attested in literature. Plutarch writes that one of the grounds on which Themistocles was attacked by his opponents was his lack of competence with the lyre:

…when Themistocles was jeered at in liberal and refined discourses carried on by those who thought they were educated, he was forced to defend himself vulgarly by saying that he did not know how to tune a lyra….but could only, if he took a small an inglorious city, make it glorious and great.

The Brygos Painter, along with Onesimos, Makron, and Douris, is one of the leading cup painters of the late Archaic period. Of all the artists active at this time, the Brygos Painter demonstrates some of the most innovative poses based on observations of nature, and characteristically, he is particularly adept at portraying situations from everyday life. Prolific in output, with over two hundred vases attributed to his hand, the Brygos Painter is named after the potter Brygos, for whom he painted some of his finest cups. His early works, which date to the years before 490 B.C., are contemporary with the early work of Onesimos; his mature period is essentially the decade after 490 B.C., the time during which he painted this kylix. The head of the music teacher, rendered with an expressive, open mouth, high brows above narrow eyes, and a long, straight nose-line, exemplifies the Brygos Painter’s mature style. The artist is known generally for his realistic representations of children, and on this kylix the painter’s ability to depict them accurately is evident in his drawing of the diminutive schoolboy, who seems to cower under the raised hand of his teacher. Typical for clothing by the Brygos Painter, the himatia of both the teacher and schoolboy have regular folds following the shape of the body only in a general way, giving the drapery a starched appearance.

 

Bibliography:

Beazley, J. D. Attic Red-Figured Vases in American Museums. Cambridge (Massachussetts) 1918, p. 90.

Boardman, J. Athenian Red-Figure Vases: The Archaic Period. London 1975, 135-36.

Robertson, M. The Art of Vase-Painting in Classical Athens. Cambridge 1992, pp. 93 -100.