Ancient Greek Art: Francois Vase

You're looking at a vase now known as the Francois vase and it gets its name from its discoverer Alessandro Francois who found it in an Etruscan tomb in the necropolis of Fonte Rotella which is in central Italy. Today it's in the Archaeological Museum in Florence and we're going to come to a little story associated with that in a moment but just to point out first of all the type of vessel that we're looking at is known as a crater and like the Dinos this was a mixing bowl for mixing wine and water and specifically this is a volute crater due to the shape of the handles. Now the story about its placement in the Archaeological Museum at Florence if you look carefully at the vessel you will see it's actually been broken into lots and lots of small pieces and then reconstructed and on display near this vase in the museum there is a stool which was once thrown at this vase by a disgruntled attendant, somebody working at the museum, mid-row with somebody else so that's what I call a really bad day at work. For our purposes it makes it a little bit tricky at times to perhaps analyse it and certainly we can see that there are large segments missing however what's probably best to do when you're thinking about the Francois vase is to think about it as a whole, typical style, what are the themes that we can see across both sides of the vessel, what are those features that we've seen on earlier vases and how is it developed rather than trying to memorise every minute detail on this vase because there are hundreds of figures for a start. So the side that we are looking at at the moment is known as side A and I'm just going to take you through the different bands and what you can see on each of them and note for the first time in our study of black figure vases so far we have got more than one narrative scene in fact the only band that now has orientalising pattern on is the very bottom one, four bands before that are all narrative scenes. So at the top we have got a story from mythology known as the Caledonian Boar Hunt which features Achilles' father Peleus, his friend Meliga and also that famous female hero Atalanta. Below that from the Iliad the chariot race with Patroclus' funeral games. We've got the wedding of Thetis and Peleus again on that third band so very popular theme amongst painters at this time. The fourth scene down we've got the ambush of Troilus who is one of the sons of King Priam and he's on horseback you can just about make him out on that right hand side and if we weren't missing that middle section there you would be able to see Achilles who is running after him on foot kind of a superhuman task, manages to catch up with the young boy on the horse and kills him. And behind you can kind of see some of the gods are in attendance there for example Hermes, you can see the Caduceus in his hand. So you'll have noticed there there are a number of scenes that link to Achilles and his father. So just something to bear in mind when we're trying to think about do these bands of narrative have any connection to one another? Is there a common theme that the artist is interested in? On the other side then if we have a look at side B on that top band we've got a dance being performed known as the crane dance by the Athenian youths who had escaped the Minotaur so you can see them arriving back off their ship on the left hand side of that top band. Beneath that you'll be able to make out from the shape of the individuals that this is a centauromachy. The middle band is the wedding of Thetis and Peleus so that is the only band on this vase that goes all the way round so it's given priority that's the most important story. The fourth band down this is the return of Hephaestus to Olympus on the donkey and if you look towards the right hand side of this particular band you will manage to pick out the donkey. Hephaestus is sat on top and behind him is a satyr associate of Dionysus and I've previously mentioned that Hephaestus can often be seen with subhuman creatures to show the fact that he is considered an outsider in relation to the other gods. And then that final band as we saw on the other side orientalising pattern with the floral designs So that's what we can see I want to have a look now in terms of the style and how this particular vase is painted so I'm going to go into a few sections in more detail with you. So we're looking at side A again now and the boar hunt, the funeral games for Patroclus and then the wedding of Thetis and Peleus. Now you'll notice first of all that we have got the dipinti we've got the little inscriptions again helping us identify who is who. We've also got the use of white slip to differentiate women from men so Atalanta in that top scene for example also Calliope and the other muses in the third band. Something else that the painter Clytius of this vase does very very well is to add depth or attempt to add depth by overlapping some of the figures as well. So you'll notice that in the mirrored poses at the top from Peleus and Meliga who are positioned directly in front of the Caledonian boar We've also got the overlapping of the horses as well with Patroclus' funeral games there so that's something kind of new and interesting that we're seeing with this particular vase. But on the whole we still see lots of very typical archaic features for example any detail is merely etched on to the surface to reveal the red colour of the clay beneath. You can also see lots of the figures are in side profile with that frontal eye showing the influence of Egyptian painting and we've also got as well the fact that certain aspects of the body are elongated usually the fingers and the toes so some developments in terms of more narrative having a bit of an overall theme to the piece but still very typically archaic in its style.