Krater with Dancing Figures

Arte ellenistica

This krater, discovered on the Borghese estate in Torrenova along Via Casilina, is one of the oldest surviving neo-Attic sculptures from the first century BCE. The body of the vase is decorated with a frieze of three draped female figures and three nude, armed males dancing before Pan, who is sitting on a rock and playing the pan pipes. One of the young women was arbitrarily restored as Apollo, and the figure of Eros also dates to a later restoration. The frieze, the upper border of which is decorated with a continuous wave motif, is enhanced by the embellishments covering the rest of the vessel. The foot and lip are decorated with a continuous Lesbian cyma pattern, while the neck is embellished with ivy. The two zoomorphic handles are in the shape of a swan’s head and neck and end in an elaborate foliate volute with a rosette in the middle.

Object details

Commentary

The lower portion of this volute krater is richly decorated with gadrooning, and the foot is embellished with a continuous Lesbian cyma pattern. The upper portion is decorated with a sculpted frieze, the upper border of which is embellished with a continuous wave motif. The neck is ringed with ivy, above which we find a band with a continuous Lesbian cyma pattern with internal upside-down palmettes, and the protruding rim is decorated with an Ionic egg and dentil cyma. The two zoomorphic handles start from the gadrooning that covers the shoulder of the vessel and are in the shape of a swan’s neck, ending in two volutes with a relief rosette in the middle.

The frieze on the body of the krater portrays three female figures and three males dancing before Pan, who is sitting on a rock and playing the pan pipes. The three young women, one of which was arbitrarily restored as Apollo, wear exquisite long garments, while the young men are nude and armed with a helmet, shield and sword.  The figure of Eros carrying a bow is also the result of a restoration. The female figures can be linked to the theme of dancing nymphs (Hauser 1889, pl. II, nos. 34 and 36), which was popular for the decoration of Attic votive reliefs in the second half of the fourth century BCE. (Feubel 1935) and found especially in exemplars from Athens (Walter 1923, p. 83, no. 176; Svoronos 1908, p. 577, pl. XCVII, no. 1879). The young women in the Borghese krater belong to the category of ‘three draped female dancers’ identified by Werner Fuchs in 1959 (Fuchs 1959, p. 33, no. C6a) and also found on two other kraters, one from the Roman colony of Urbs Salvia in Marche and one found in a villa on the Esquiline Hill in Rome (Fabrini 2011).

The iconography of armed dancing males can be found in various neo-Attic reliefs, including one in the Museo Pio Clementino, Vatican City (Spinola 1999, pp. 235–236, no. 66) in which the six, armed warriors are performing a sinuous dance called the pyrrhiche.

The pairing of the two distinct themes, male and female, expresses the eclectic nature of neo-Attic art made in Athens in the first century BCE, the period to which the Borghese krater can be dated. The Sosibios Vase in the Louvre, which has the same compositional structure and elegant decorative bands, was made in the same production milieu (Hauser 1889, p. 7).

Giulia Ciccarello