One side, Nike (the personification of victory) offering fillet (band) to youth Other side, Eros and youth
This object belongs to a group of roughly half a dozen pieces, all of the same construction and exceptionally fine quality but of undetermined function. The two most frequently advanced interpretations are that they served as bobbins or yo-yos. The shape lends itself to either purpose. The fragility of the material makes clear that they must have been dedications. Like the adjacent pyxis, this bobbin demonstrates the Penthesilea Painter's wonderful gift for color and composition.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta bobbin
Artist:Attributed to the Penthesilea Painter
Period:Classical
Date:ca. 460–450 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; white-ground
Dimensions:diameter of side A 4 13/16 in. (12.3 cm); diameter of side B 5 1/16 in. (12.8 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Fletcher Fund, 1928
Object Number:28.167
Inscription: Inscribed on each side: "the boy is fair"
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1928. "A Greek Bobbin." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 23(12), part 1: pp. 303–6, figs. 1–3.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1930. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 348, fig. 250, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1936[1934]. A Guide to the Collections, Part 1: Ancient and Oriental Art, 2nd edn. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. and Lindsley F. Hall. 1936. Red-Figured Athenian Vases in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 74, pp. 103–5, pls. 76, 178, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1944, 1949. Greek Painting: The Development of Pictorial Representation from Archaic to Graeco-Roman Times. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1946. Attic Red-Figured Vases: A Survey. pp. 92, 98, figs. 32f, 69, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 85, 226, pl. 66b, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Bandinelli, Ranuccio Bianchi. 1958. Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica, Classica e Orientale, Vol. 3. pp. 870, 908, fig. 1084, Rome: Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1958[1946]. Attic Red-Figured Vases: A Survey, Revised Edition, 2nd edn. pp. 92, 98, figs. 32f, 69, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Beazley, John D. 1963[1942]. Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, Vols. 1 and 2, 2nd ed. pp. 890, 1673, no. 175, Add. 1, pp. 879–90, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1970. "The Department of Greek and Roman Art: Triumphs and Tribulations." Metropolitan Museum Journal, 3: pp. 75, 80, fig. 12.
Beck, Frederick A. G. 1975. Album of Greek Education: The Greeks at School and at Play. p. 42, fig. 258, Sydney: Cheiron Press.
Wehgartner, Irma. 1983. Attisch Weissgrundige Keramik: Maltechniken, Werkstätten, Formen, Verwendung. no. 6, p. 157–8, pl. 53,1, Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
Hermary, Antoine. 1986. "Trois notes d'iconographie." Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 110(1): p. 222.
Lefkowitz, Mary R. 2002. "Predatory" Goddesses." Hesperia, 71(4): p. 332, fig. 5.
Cohen, Beth. 2006. The Colors of Clay: Special Techniques in Athenian Vases no. 61, pp. 220–21, Malibu: J. Paul Getty Trust.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 134, pp. 122, 431, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Padgett, J. Michael. 2017. The Berlin Painter and His World : Athenian Vase-Painting in the Early Fifth Century B.C. p. 143 n. 61, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Chiarini, Sara. 2018. The So-called Nonsense Inscriptions on Ancient Greek Vases : Between Paideia and Paidiá. pp. 418–19, Leiden/ Boston: Brill.
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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.
