Several recent studies of Greek and Roman religion have focused attention on what has come to be known as “personal” or “individual” (or even “individuated”) religion, as opposed to the notion of “polis religion,” which had been popularized by the work of Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, among others. Discussions of ‘individual’ or ‘personal’ religion often make reference to Greek marble votive reliefs as prime examples in the realm of material culture. The individual who dedicated the relief typically shows himself or herself in the presence of the recipient, whether god or hero. This is one way of expressing “communication with the divine,” another phrase that has recently entered the literature on ancient religion.

If Greek votive reliefs have become emblematic of ‘communication with the divine’ because they juxtapose the mortal worshiper with the divinity or hero in the same scene, this does not make it any easier to understand the nature of the relationship that is being portrayed. Recent studies by Verity Platt and Georgia Petridou have made a promising start in this direction, though for both authors the votive reliefs are a relatively small part of a broader inquiry. Rather than addressing this question directly, I have long been interested in how the visual language of the votive reliefs, in particular those made in Athens in the late fifth and fourth centuries BC, was formed in the first place. In several earlier papers, I explored how the imagery of Attic marble votive reliefs and that of black-and red-figure vase painting may intersect at certain points and thus suggest modes of transmission of motifs between different media. In one paper, the starting point was an enigmatic black-figure vase interpreted in the light of later reliefs of the banqueting hero type. In another, a small group of votive reliefs of about 400 BC that had consistently been identified in the scholarship as depicting Ares and Aphrodite was reinterpreted in part with reference to the libation motif on black-figure and Classical red-figure vases. A third paper looked at some individual gestures that are shared between votive reliefs and vase paintings.

Two basic objections could be made to this approach. One is that vases and votives were made for very different purposes, and the great majority of vases were not made as dedications in a sanctuary.