Geometric: Terracotta Krater

Art History

Ancient Greece

Geometric: Terracotta Krater
Archaic: Exekias, Attic black figure amphora with Ajax and Achilles playing a game
Archaic: Exekias, Dionysos Kylix, c. 530 B.C.E.
Archaic: Mixing Vessel with Odysseus Escaping from the Cyclops's Cave
Archaic: New York Kouros
The Classical Orders
Archaic and Early Classical: Ancient Greek Temples at Paestum, Italy
Archaic and Early Classical: East and West Pediments, Temple of Aphaia, Aegina
Early Classical: Polykleitos, Doryphoros (Spear-Bearer)
Classical: Myron, Discobolus (Discus Thrower), Roman copy of an ancient Greek bronze
Classical: Parthenon Frieze
Classical: Sculpture from the Parthenon's East Pediment
Classical: Parthenon Metopes
Classical: Caryatid and Column from the Erechtheion
Late Classical: Lysippos, Farnese Hercules, 4th century B.C.E. (later Roman copy by Glycon)
Late Classical: After Praxiteles, Venus (Roman Copy)
Hellenistic: Barberini Faun
Hellenistic: Dying Gaul
Hellenistic: Nike of Samothrace
Hellenistic: The Pergamon Altar
Hellenistic: Apollonius, Boxer at Rest
Hellenistic: Alexander Mosaic
Hellenistic: Laocoön and his Sons
Hellenistic: Eros Sleeping and An Old Market Woman

Geometric: Terracotta Krater Krater, Terracotta, 42 5/8 in. height (108.25 cm), c. 750--700 B.C.E., Geometric Period, Attic, attributed to the Hirschfeld Workshop (Metropolitan Museum of Art) Speakers: Monica Hahn, Brian Seymour Attic refers to Attica, a historic region of Greece that included Athens.

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Geometric: Terracotta Krater

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Okay Brian and Monica, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
on a very crowded afternoon
standing before one of the heroic vases as you enter into the
Greek gallery, this is described as a geometric crater from the 8th century BCE.
Why is it called geometric?
The geometric style is evident on these vases.
You can see it in the pattern on the lip up top. You see that meander pattern
and then each individual section is framed, so in a
series of rings, almost like Olympic rings
around the outside of the vase,
we see different shapes and patterns, so
lots of geometric pattern.
And even the...there are some huge forms here in animal forms, but they themselves seem to be kind of
reduced to geometric shapes and patterns
Interesting, though we do have figure activity on the vase, so
as I'm told, early geometric vases only had geometric decoration.
Right.
So moving now into the next century
we start to see a lot more human activity.
What was this vase used for?
It's a very large vase, so
you can't imagine storing wine or putting olives
in this one, right? I mean, how large is it?
It's standing above our heads, but it looks like a...few feet, and we
know about these vases that they weren't actually kept in the home, right?
No, these in fact were
gravemarkers. In fact, the vases have perforations in the bottom
and, they would mark graves and libations would be
poured into them, and it would slowly
seep into the ground underneath as a kind of offering
to the dead.
There have been tough shape. Lot's of breaks on them, right?
Yes. This is made of terra cotta, baked earth, so
it would break into large chunks, so it wouldn't shatter,
like glass.
That's right.
So, many of these are reassembled? Yes.
Okay, so we do have, geometric decoration,
we see it on the foot, and as it moves up, we start to see
some figure activity, and this is a new trend in geometric art, right?
That's right. And the activity that we see portrayed here
goes right along with the vase's function. It's a funerary
scene that we see here. We can see, there is the deceased
lying on a funeral bier, as it's called. We see mourners
on either side. They've got their, they're tearing at their hair
in a traditional Greek gesture of mourning as they're
assembled on either side of that central funerary scene.
What's interesting, you noted the dead lying
horizontally on the funeral bier, not distinguished in any way
from the other figures, they're all exactly the same.
That's right, yeah.
So the gesture that they make distinguishes them as
living, whereas the deceased are simply lying there.
Correct.
In an Egyptian context, we would see the dead person
to be celebrated with a lot of imagery, a lot of symbolism.
Here, we don't get much more than the body.
That's correct, and perhaps his family assembled on either side.
He's being fanned by these palm fronds as you can see by
figures, to either side.
So, interesting, even in this early period, the Greeks seemed
to be much more about life than death.
It seems that way.
The focus is on the mourners, who are expressing grief,
rather than on what the deceased did for a living or what
status they held, maybe, in an Egyptian context.
Right.
Now, you mentioned before that the body forms are very
simplified. But we have no trouble reading the vase. Is that right?
Absolutely, in terms of that procession we see in that lower register
we can see...we have no trouble identifying that there are three
horses pulling that chariot even though they share one body.
But we can see that the artist is attempting a kind of, illusion
of depth, by overlapping those figures.
So very different than we would expect in a Grecco-Roman
sense, where we would have perspective.
Right, in later times, where that would be defined
much more illusionistically.
So very flat. We tend to walk right past these in the
museum, because they feel like they're marking an
entrance-way, like Heraldic lions or something.
Certainly, this would've had a much more special appeal
in Ancient Greece, right. This is not an ordinary object.
Yeah, these have a very specialized function. You can't just
throw a pot like this any day. This is reserved for
wealthy Greeks who can afford this kind of thing
to mark their graves of their beloved deceased.
So, so, rooms and rooms in museums have vases that
probably would have more of a utilitarian function.
For wine and oil and such
This one sounds like it's very different.
Absolutely.

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