Obverse, Ajax attempting to rape Cassandra at the statue of Athena Reverse, Theseus attacking the Minotaur
A lost epic poem, the Iliu Persis, described the fall of Troy to the Greeks. Cassandra, a daughter of King Priam, tried to take refuge at a statue of Athena but was dragged away and raped by the Greek warrior Ajax. Here she kneels below Athena's shield, while Ajax appears to be challenging the goddess herself. The artist has shown the statue of Athena as it appeared on every Panathenaic prize amphora.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta amphora (jar)
Artist:Attributed to Group E
Period:Archaic
Date:ca. 540 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; black-figure
Dimensions:H. 16 7/8 in. (42.8 cm); diameter 11 5/16 in. (28.8 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1941
Accession Number:41.162.143
Bonnefons de Lavialle. April 25,1836. Description des Antiquités et Objets d’Art qui composent le Cabinet de Feu M. Le Chevalier E. Durand. no. 408, p. 149.
Gerhard, Eduard. 1858. Auserlesene Griechische vasenbilder: hauptsächlich etruskischen fundorts. Heroenbilder, meistens Homerisch. p. 147 n. 48, Berlin.
1865. Catalogue des objets d'art et de haute curiosité antiques, du moyen age et de la renaissance qui composent les collections de feu M. le comte de Pourtalès-Gorgier, et dont la vente aura lieu en son hôtel, rue Trochet no. 7, le lundi 6 fevrier 1865. no. 227, p. 60.
Hoppin, James C. and Albert Eugene Gallatin. 1926. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, USA 1, Hoppin and Gallatin Collections. p. 85, Gallatin pl. 35a–c, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Beazley, John D. 1931-32. "Groups of Mid-Sixth-Century Black-Figure." Annual of the British School at Athens, 32: no. 26, p. 6.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1942. "The Gallatin Collection of Greek Vases." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 37(3): pp. 52–54, fig. 2.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1945. "The Metropolitan's Classics." Art News p.14.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 58 n. 34, 198, pl. 38d, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Arias, Paolo Enrico. 1955. "Dalle necropoli di Spina la tomba 136 di valle Pega." Revista dell' Istituto Nazionale d'archeologia e storia dell'arte, 4: p. 167 n. 6.
Beazley, John D. 1956. Attic Black-figure Vase-painters. p. 134, no. 25, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1963. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. United States of America 12. The Metropolitan Museum of Art 3. Attic Black-figured Amphorae. pl. 14, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Beazley, John D. 1971. Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters [2nd edition]. p. 55, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Young, Ellen. 1972. "The slaying of the Minotaur : evidence in art and literature for the development of the myth, 700-400 B.C. Ph.D. diss." Ph.D. Diss. p. 135. Bryn Mawr College.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1981. Vol. 1: Aara-Aphlad. "Aias II," p. 340, no. 19, pl. 254, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Böhr, Elke. 1982. Der Schaukelmaler. p. 32 n. 265, Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
Hedreen, Guy Michael. 2001. Capturing Troy: The Narrative Functions of Landscape in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Art. p. 25 n. 10, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
