Art and Oracle: A Scholarly Resource of African and Rituals of Divination | Explore & Learn

Enlarge image

Terracotta Amphora (jar)
Greek
Attic, red-figure ca. 530 B.C.
Signed by Andokides as potter
Attributed to the Andokides Painter (red-figure) and the Lysippides Painter (black-figure)
Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1963
(63.11.6)

Obverse: the struggle for the Delphic tripod; Athena, Herakles, Apollo, and Artemis

Reverse: Dionysos between a satyr and a maenad

On the lip: in black-figure on white ground, Herakles fighting the Nemean lion, watched by Iolaos and Athena

Description of this section

Next object in this section
Previous object

or the subject on the front of the vase, the painter chose the struggle between Herakles and Apollo over the sacred tripod at Delphi, one of the greatest sanctuaries in the Greek world. It was the site of an oracle, a place people visited to put questions to the god Apollo and receive prophetic answers. The tripod (here, a bowl on three long legs) was the symbol of Delphi. In the image, Apollo holds the right side of the tripod in one hand and his characteristic bow and arrow in the other. The powerful nude figure on the other side of the tripod is Herakles, the heroic strongman, brandishing a club above his head. The exploits of Herakles included encounters with human adversaries and monstrous animals; on the white lip of the vase, he can be seen strangling the supposedly invincible lion of Nemea.

In the myth depicted on the body of the vase, Herakles killed a man and was struck with a disease as punishment. He went to Delphi to find out how to atone for his crime, but the oracle refused to answer. In a rage, he seized the tripod and stole it to set up his own oracle. Behind Apollo is his sister Artemis, smelling a flower and also holding a bow. In front of Herakles is his divine protector, Athena. This is the moment when either the god or the hero might win, and the tripod occupies center stage between them. In the end, Apollo won, and the tripod remained at Delphi.

This amphora marks a turning point in Attic vase painting. It is one of the earliest executed in the red-figure technique. The introduction of the red-figure technique is attributed to the workshop of Andokides. While we think of red-figure mainly in terms of drawing, it differs from black-figure also in a very different apportionment of the glazed and unglazed surfaces on a vase. The preparation of these surfaces was probably the responsibility of a potter, and for that reason the new technique is associated with a potter rather than a painter. On some works combining red-figure and black-figure, a single painter seems to have done both; here, however, two different artists are likely.

The new red-figure style did not replace the black-figure technique all at once, and there are some vases on which the two appear side by side. On those vases by the potter Andokides that are half red-figure and half black-figure, the artist of the red-figure side has been identified as the Andokides Painter, and the artist of the black-figure side has been identified as the Lysippides Painter. It is at about this time that painting on white ground made its appearance, and the potter Andokides applied a white slip to the vertical surface of the mouth and asked a black-figure painter—possibly Psiax, who was well-versed in a miniature style—to decorate the surface with the wrestling scene of Herakles and the Nemean lion in the presence of Athena and Hermes.