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A New Interpretation of the Portland Vase

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Bernard Ashmole
Bernard Ashmole
Affiliation:
Oxford
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Extract

For three hundred years and more the meaning of the figures on the Portland Vase has been a matter for speculation of the most strange and varied character.

During the first half of this century there was something of a lull, but ten years ago Professor Erika Simon, after a wide-ranging and sensitive study of all the evidence, put forward a highly ingenious theory connecting the scenes with the ancestry of Augustus and, shortly after, Professor L. Polacco embroidered it further. In 1964 Mr Denys Haynes produced the excellent little book which is on sale at the British Museum: this was reviewed by Professor H. Möbius, who had his own theory, elaborated since in a longer article; and Professor H. Biesantz has exposed the weaknesses of all the solutions, without however propounding one of his own.

The wide differences of opinion among these scholars have prompted me to place on record some observations I made twenty years ago, when we first acquired the vase at the British Museum; and I shall take Mr Haynes' book as a starting-point, because it is the latest comprehensive account, and, being persuasively argued, bids fair to hold the field.

However, before we begin to examine the vase in detail, a few words must be said on its technique, its date, and the circumstances in which it was made (plates I–IV, VI–VII). The technique was to make a bubble of very dark blue glass, clear but so thick that it cannot be seen through, and over it a skin of white translucent glass reaching as far upwards as the base of the neck: then to join two deep-blue glass handles from the middle of the neck to the shoulder of the vase; and, finally, using the technique of the cameo-carver, to carve, and carve away, the white glass layer in order to produce figures and landscape. The blue glass becomes the background of the scene where the white has been completely removed: where the white has been thinned but not completely removed, the blue provides suggestions of shadow and distance.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 87 , November 1967 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1967

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References

1 Simon, Erika, Die Portlandvase (Mainz, 1957)Google Scholar: with bibliography to 1953. I have to thank Professor Simon for her kindness in allowing me to use six of the fine plates from her book, and the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum of Mainz for their generous loan of the blocks. All photographs of the Portland Vase are by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. Fig. 1 is from Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei: Fig. 2 from the British Museum Catalogue of Vases: Fig. 3 from the Catalogue of the Museo Capitolino, British School at Rome and Oxford University Press: Figs. 4–7 from Robert, Die Antiken Sarkophag-reliefs: Fig. 8 from Brunn, I Rilievi delle Urne Etrusche: Fig. 9 is by courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Fig. 10 is from a Museum postcard by Photo-Pan, Thasos.

2 Polacco, L., Athenaeum n.s. (Pavia) xxxvi (1958) 123–41.Google Scholar

3 Haynes, D. E. L., The Portland Vase (1964)Google Scholar, with a witty summary of previous interpretations, 27–31.

4 Möbius, H., Gnomon xxxvi (1964) 636Google Scholar: Die Reliefs der Portlandvase, und das antike Dreifigurenbild (Abh. Bayerische Akad. d. Wissenschaften N.F., Heft 61): revised by Haynes, , Gnomon 1966, 730–2.Google Scholar

5 Werkzeitschrift Jenaer Glaswerk iii (1965) 6–13.

6 Altmann, W., Die Römischen Grabaltäre der Kaiserzeit (1905)Google Scholar: Cumont, F., Le symbolisme funéraire des Romains (1942).Google Scholar

7 Carcopino, J., La basilique Pythagoricienne (1926)Google Scholar: Bendinelli, G., Mon. Ant. xxxi (1927) 601–856, pls. i–xliii.Google Scholar

8 Strong, E., Art in Ancient Rome ii, 126–9Google Scholar: F. Cumomt, op. cit., passim.

9 On a sarcophagus in the Louvre, otherwise completely carved, the heads of Diana and Endymion have been left rough, presumably in order that they might be finished as portraits of the eventual occupants: Robert, , Ant. Sarkophag. iii, 86–9Google Scholar, no. 72, pl. xviii.

10 Op. cit., 16–20.

11 Haynes, op. cit., 27, no. 5; 31, no. 19.

12 Surely all this is obvious even in the rolled-out drawing of the two sides of the vase at the end of Haynes' book: and if rolling out into a continuous picture on the flat cannot make the two scenes look like one, how can they be expected to read as one when they are on opposite sides of the vase?

13 Op. cit., 28 f.

14 Op. cit., 14.

15 Any careful draughtsman setting out to draw the vase soon notices not only this, but also that not one of the alleged ‘horns’ matches another in either shape or size, and he therefore either ignores them, as in the dal Pozzo drawing reproduced by Haynes, op. cit., pl. xiv, or draws what he sees, as in the folder at the end of Haynes' book.

16 Simon, op. cit., 3 (with references), pls. 21–3. ProfessorSimon, has since published an important article on other vases in this technique (Journal of Glass Studies vi [1964] 13–30).Google Scholar

17 Fuchs, W., Die Vorbilder der neu-attischen Reliefs, pls. 30, 32.Google Scholar

18 Robert-Rodenwaldt, , Ant. Sarkophag. v, Die Meerwesen by Rumpf, A., (1939) 11 ff.Google Scholar On Okeanos see also Pauly-Wissowa xvii 2308–2361 and West, M. L., Hesiod, , Theogony (1966) 201.Google Scholar

19 B.S.R. (ed. Jones, Stuart) Cat. Mus. Capit. 77–81Google Scholar, S.T.D. iii no. 1. See also note 46.

20 Haynes, op. cit., 28, no. 6.

21 Smith, E. B., Architectural Symbolism (Princeton Monographs, 1956) 30 ff.Google Scholar: see also Goldman, Bernard, The Sacred Portal (1966).Google Scholar

22 Metzger, , Représentations 420Google Scholar: Picard, , Annales Gand ii 139.Google Scholar

23 Even in copies of the Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles the action has sometimes been in doubt; yet it is certain that she was discarding her garment (Blinkenberg, C., Knidia 52 f.Google Scholar)

24 See Heckenbach, J., De nuditate sacra (Giessen, 1911)Google Scholar, and references there given. I thank Professor Morton Smith for his notes on the use of garments in initiation.

25 Robert, , Ant. Sarkophag. ii, 2 ff.Google Scholar no. 1, pl. i.

26 Amelung, , Antiken in Florenz 18–20Google Scholar, no. 18: Ryberg, I. Scott, Mem. Am. Acad. xxii (1955) pl. lviiiGoogle Scholar, figs. 90–1.

27 This is clear on the vase, and in Bartolozzi's engraving (Simon op. cit., Abb. 1) but the wing is omitted in the drawing at the end of Haynes' book.

28 Haynes, op. cit. 14.

29 Herrmann, , Denkmäler der Malerei plates 2, 11 and 129.Google Scholar Compare also the terracotta of Perseus and Andromeda from Egnazia: Levi, A., Terrecotte del Mus. Naz. di Napoli 94Google Scholar, no. 400, fig. 78. In another painting of Perseus, and Andromeda, (Mus. Borbonico vol. vi Tav. xl.)Google Scholar as in the relief of the same subject in Rome (Jones, Stuart, Mus. Capit. 218Google Scholar, Imp. no. 89, pl. 53) Perseus places his hand under the forearm of Andromeda; but this is so natural a gesture in helping someone down from a higher level that no special significance need be attached to it. On a cup by the Brygos Painter in the British Museum (ARV2 371 no. 24: Richter, , Furniture of the Greeks … [1966] fig. 282Google Scholar) it is not easy to decide whether the gesture is one of encouragement or of token resistance: the ultimate intention is the same. I thank Professor P. von Blanckenhagen for his most helpful observations on this and on other points.

30 Metamorph. xi 253.

31 Metamorph. xi 244.

32 In this peaceful composition there is possibly a reminiscence, how transmitted we can only guess, of one of the less peaceful versions, for instance those on Kerch vases three centuries before, where, however, Eros is already present and the capture of Thetis, though still forcible, is not violent: Metzger, , Représentations 268Google Scholar, nos. 2 and 3; pl. xxxvi; and 273 f., where the changes of tone are analysed.

33 For the type see Heibig, , Führer 2 ii 25Google Scholar, no. 1188.

34 For references see Rose, , Handbook of Greek Mythology (1959) 39Google Scholar notes 50, 52.

35 On one of the short sides of the sarcophagus with the wedding of Peleus and Thetis (note 25) Poseidon is shown. He is there not because of the sea-creatures and the head of Okeanos on the lid—Okeanos, and the belief that the souls of the dead pass to Elysium over his waters, belong to a different and perhaps older stratum of ideas. Poseidon is present on the sarcophagus probably for the same reason that he is present on the Portland Vase, because he has been a suitor of Thetis: he turns his back on the wedding.

36 Mon. Ant. xxxi (1927) pl. xi.

37 E.g. Lullies, R., Sammlung gr. Kleinkunst (1955) no. 82 pl. 4.3Google Scholar, Pfuhl, M. u. Z. iii 203 no. 532Google Scholar, and 215 no. 552: clearer in Hirmer-Arias no. 200: cf. id. pl. xlv.

38 Furtwängler-Reichhold, ii, pl. 120, 3.

39 B.M., Cat. Vases iv, F 92.Google Scholar The drawing in fig. 2, taken from this catalogue, shows the column and the sword which, once painted in a lighter colour, have almost disappeared from the vase itself. By the Rehearsal Painter, about 370 B.C.: so named from a vase in the Ashmolean (1944. 15). Cambitoglou, A., Some groups of Greek South Italian Vases 1950Google Scholar (typescript in B.M.)

40 A similar type is sometimes used in Pompeian wall-paintings for Meleager.

41 Pindar, , Nem. iv 49Google Scholar: for other references see Roscher, , Lexikon i 51, 4.Google Scholar

42 Simon, op. cit. pl. 37, 1.

43 R. Brilliant, Gesture and Rank in Roman Art, index s.v. clementia Imperatoris.

44 On many vases from the later sixth century B.C. onwards: e.g. by Oltos, ARV 2 i 61Google Scholar, no. 74; by the Brygos Painter id. 380, no. 171: on an Etruscan vase, Beazley, , EVP 52 f. pl. x, 2.Google ScholarCf. Bulas, K., Illustrations antiques de l'Iliade (1929) 23 ff.Google Scholar: A.J.A. liv (1950) 112–118.

45 Dr Donald Strong points out that there has probably been some modern re-cutting of the vase, for example where the right knee of this figure has been made to coincide exactly with the left edge of the column. The abnormal length of the left thigh suggests that the prototype which served the artist as model displayed, as the sarcophagi do, some of the weapons of Achilles beside him, which would mask the length of the thigh. I do not think they were actually shown on the Portland Vase, although the surface here has been damaged andperhaps re-cut.

46 B.S.R. (ed. Jones, Stuart) Cat. Mus. Capit. 77–81Google Scholar, S.T.D. iii no. 1: for the sarcophagus from Tarsus, now in Adana, see Budde, L., Festschrift E. von Mercklin (1964) 9 ff.Google Scholar, pls. 1–14.

47 See Haynes, op. cit. 27, no. 1. It had been known long before this, as Vermeule, C. shows in The Portland Vase before 1650 (Third Annual Wedgwood International Seminar, Boston Mus. F.A., 1958) 59–70Google Scholar: see also Vermeule, , The dal Pozzo-Albani Drawings of Classical Antiquities in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle (Trans. Am. Philosoph. Soc. n.s. lvi [1966] 19 f. nos. 8317–8320).Google Scholar

48 Gli antichi sepolcri (1697) xii, pls. 84–6.

49 Athenaeum (London) 4244 (1909) 265.

50 On the other hand, to judge from the restorations and re-working, the sarcophagus must have been damaged, and therefore perhaps plundered, in antiquity.

51 iii 19. 13.

52 Jouan, F., Euripide et les légendes des Chants Cypriens 41Google Scholar with other references, 44.

53 Proclus, Chrestomathy i (Hesiod, Loeb edn. p. 494).Google Scholar We may recall also the remark in Hesiod, , Catalogues i 102 ff.Google Scholar that no man on earth would have won Helen, had she been a maiden, except Achilles. Cf. Euripides, , Helen 98 f.Google Scholar

54 Roscher, Lexikon i 56Google Scholar, g, (1) (c) s.v. Achilleus(Fleischer): cf. id. i 1951 s.v. Helena (Engelmann).

55 References in note 7.

56 Robert, , Ant. Sarkophag. ii 9Google Scholar, no. 9, pl. iii.

57 Brunn, , I rilievi delle urne Etrusche pls. xvii, 2Google Scholar; xxv: Ghali-Kahil, L. B., Les enlèvements et le retour d'Hélène pls. xcvi, 1Google Scholar; xcvii, 2; xcviii, 1, 2; xcix, 1–3.

58 Brunn, op. cit. pl. xvii, 1 (our fig. 8); xxiv, 15: Ghali-Kahil, op. cit. pl. xcvii, 1.

59 Lysistr. 155–6: Ghali-Kahil, op. cit. 31 f.: Clement, P., Hesp. xxvii (1958) 47–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The motive appears in the early seventh century B.C. on the relief-pithos in Mykonos: Ervin, , Deltion xviii 61Google Scholar, pl. 22: Schefold, , Myth and Legend, pl. 35b.Google Scholar

60 Ghali-Kahil, , Les enlèvements.….42, 71–112, 326 f.Google Scholar

61 Beazley, , EVP 7Google Scholar, pl. xxiii: Ghali-Kahil, , Les enlèvements … pl. lxxiii, 2–4.Google Scholar

62 E.g. Metzger, , Représentations … 280Google Scholar, no. 33, pl. xxxviii: Ghali-Kahil, , Les enlèvements … pls. xxi (the same vase)Google Scholar; vi, 1; xxiii, 1.

63 xviii, 43–8.

64 Gow, A., Theocritus (1950) ii 358–60.Google ScholarCf. Rose, H. J., Handbook of Greek Mythology (1952) 230.Google Scholar

65 Cumont, , Mystères de Mithra i 211 f.Google Scholar

66 Haynes (op. cit. 21 n. 21), like Schulz, has doubted it.

67 A similar but not identical object appears on a cameo in Naples (Simon, op. cit. 3 f., pl. 20, 1). The subject is Daedalus and Icarus: on the right is a goddess generally supposed to be Britomartis, who is seated on rocks beside which the object rests. Its presence could be explained by her being an underworld goddess. The cameo has been thought to be false by Curtius, L., AA 1944–1945, 5 f.Google Scholar In a picture from Pompeii of a symposium of Erotes and Psychai below a statue of Psyche (as Hekate), an Eros on the left of the scene has one foot on what looks like a fallen block of masonry, and a Psyche on the right has one foot on another block of different shape. Herrmann, , Denkmäler der Malerei i 86Google Scholar, fig. 24.

68 Altmann, , Grabaltäre pls. i–iiGoogle Scholar: Strong, , La scultura Romana 60–2Google Scholar, fig. 39: Simon op. cit. 48, pl. 20, 2.

69 One end of a marble urn of early Imperial date, from the tomb of the Volumnii at Perugia, is carved with a relief of various funerary symbols, one of which is a single Corinthian column supporting anoverturned vase: Körte, G., Das Volumniergrab bei Perugia (Abh. Wiss. Göttingen N.F. xii, 1) 31 f. pl. vii, 2.Google Scholar Mrs Noël Oakeshott draws my attention to two passages in Euripides', Iphigeneia in Tauris (lines 50–3, 57)Google Scholar where a man is compared to a column; in the first, which describes a dream, the capital sprouts human hair. It is not a long step from this to regarding a fallen capital as an emblem of death, but I can find no ancient authority for it. The broken column, commonly used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with this meaning, also seems to lack any ancient prototype.

70 Chase, G. H., Catalogue of Arretine Pottery 69Google Scholar, no. 61, pl. xxvi.

71 Ovid, (Metamorph. xi 234)Google Scholar speaks of a myrtlewood near the grotto of Thetis.

72 BCH li (1927) 489 f., fig. 7.

73 At the end of the Alexandros of Euripides, Aphrodite explained that her actions were the will of Zeus: Jouan, , Euripide 52.Google Scholar

74 Scholiast on Iliad i 5 (Hesiod, Loeb edn. p. 496): Ghali-Kahil, op. cit. 28.

75 For the stylization of the palm cf. Adriani, , Coppa paesistica, pl. xliiiGoogle Scholar, fig. 129, and pl. xlv.

76 In the time of Pausanias ‘most of the games have a crown of palm, and everywhere apalm is placed in the victor's right hand’ (viii 48, 2.) On the sepulchral meaning of the palm see Cumont, , Symbolisme funéraire des Romains (1942)Google Scholar index s.v. palme.

77 Op. cit. 10.

78 Op. cit. 19–20; Gnomon xxxviii (1966) 730–2.