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Paintings on the Amazon Sarcophagus of Corneto

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Sidney Colvin
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Extract

Few monuments of ancient art possess either a more obvious beauty and attraction, or a greater interest for the archæological student, than the sarcophagus painted with various scenes of an Amazonomachia, which was discovered in 1869 in a grave at a little distance from Corneto, the ancient Tarquinii, and was a few years afterwards acquired for the Egyptian and Etruscan Museum at Florence. Its date is probably not much after 300 B.C., and the pictures which adorn it, even if not the work of a Greek hand, offer us the best example we possess of the manner of Greek polychrome painting in that age. They have been already described by several highly competent writers, including Dr. Helbig and Otto Donner (Bull. dell' Inst. 1869, p. 198 sq.); the late Dr. Klügmann, who for years made representations of the Amazons in ancient art his especial study (Ann. dell' Inst. 1873, p. 239 sq.); Mr. Dennis (Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 2nd ed., 1881, p. 96 sq.); and Dr. Woermann (Woltmann and Woermann, Hist. of Painting, English ed., 1880, vol. i., p. 100). But hitherto no adequate illustrations of them have been published. The sketches in slightly shaded outline engraved, (Mon dell' Inst., vol. ix., pl. lx.), to accompany Dr. Klügmann's article above referred to, furnish, indeed, a useful key to the shape and dimensions of the sarcophagus, and to the arrangement and subject-matter of its pictures. But of the style of the work they give little notion, and of its colouring, from the nature of the case, none at all. Coloured facsimiles of some selected portions of these most interesting paintings are published for the first time with the present number of the Journal of Hellenic Studies (Pls. XXXVI., XXXVII., XXXVIII.).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 4 , November 1883 , pp. 354 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1883

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References

page 354 note 1 Coloured drawings of the whole sarcophagus on its first discovery were made at the order of the Italian Government, and are presumably still in the possession of the Department of Public Instruction. The Council of the Archæological Institute at Rome proposed to have another set of coloured drawings made for publication, but the Avvocato Bruschi, on whose ground the sarcophagus had been discovered, refused them permission. After it had passed from his hands into the Egyptian Museum at Florence, they again entertained a similar purpose, but it fell to the ground for want of a skilled hand to undertake the work. See Ann. dell' Inst. 1873, pp. 244 and 251.

page 355 note 2 It is to be noted that, Mr. Murray's drawings not having been originally intended for publication, the scale of the figures accidentally varies slightly in each of them, those in Pl. xxxvi. being on the largest, and those in Pl. xxxviii. on the smallest scale. Moreover he has omitted from Pl. xxxvii. the letters of the Etruscan inscription rudely incised along the upper margin of the picture. Another portion of the same disfiguring inscription duly appears as in the original in Pl. xxxvi.

page 359 note 1 Figured Bouillon, , Musée de Sculpture, ii. 94Google Scholar, a, b, Steiner, Der Amazonenmythus, pl. v.

page 359 note 2 Clarac, ii. Pl. 117, A, B, Overbeck, , Heroische Bildwerke, xxi. 8Google Scholar.

page 361 note 1 See Ross, Die Akropolis von Athen, pl. xii., a.

page 361 note 2 The injury of the left eye, and almost complete obliteration of its lower eyelid, give an appearance of inequality to the eyes which does not proceed from any real fault of drawing, and is more noticeable in the reproduction than the original.

page 363 note 1 Der Amazonenmythus, p. 60.

page 364 note 1 See Klügmann, , Ann. dell' Inst. 1867, p. 211Google Scholar, and Der Amazonenmythus, p. 45 sq. In the former place the author gives a list of not less than sixteen vases in which this group is repeated with more or less variation.

page 365 note 1 Quoted by Klügmann, , Ann. dell' Inst. 1873, p. 242Google Scholar note, but not more nearly described. Another vase quoted by the same author in the same place (Mon. dell' Inst. 1856, Pl. 15) is not to the point: the quadriga in this case is that of Theseus, in which the Amazon Antiopè is being carried captive; cf. the representation on the Kertch sarcophagus (see p. 366, note 1).

page 366 note 1 Chariots similarly drawn by four white horses occur in a work closely analogous to this, and probably of about the same date, viz. the fragments of the painted wooden sarcophagus of Kertch representing the Rape of the Leucippidae. But these are the chariots of the Dioskouroi, and belong naturally to the subject.